Fans of reality television who consume the dryly amusing,
fatally titled romantic comedy, Failure to Launch, can be excused from worrying that they have suddenly developed double vision. The movie's hunky, pathologically lying heartthrob, Tripp, played by Matthew McConaughey with a smirk and a swagger, is almost a dead ringer for Travis Stork, the honey-dripping Prince Charming of The Bachelor: Paris.
Tripp and Travis are both experts at pouring on the sweet talk, using their blinding smiles to camouflage their coldblooded scrutiny. Both have rub-a-dub washboard abs ready for the hand laundering of their girlfriends' delicate undergarments.
The world of Failure to Launch, of course, is not the real world but the romantic comedy planet, which means the movie has only the most tenuous connection with reality. But the same could be said of classic 1930s screwball comedies in which the treacherous feints and ploys of the mating game are transmuted into witty, romantically charged repartee.
A self-described "boat broker" who wines and dines potential conquests on other people's yachts while they're away, Tripp has a good thing going. At 35, he still lives contentedly with his parents, Sue (Kathy Bates) and Al (Terry Bradshaw), in their stately home in suburban New Orleans. Each morning, Mom plies Tripp with a stack of pancakes, then sends him off to sell boats, toting the lunch she has carefully packed for him. She is the best and cheapest full-time housekeeper a boy could ask for.
Tripp and his buddies, Ace (Justin Bartha), a computer geek, and Demo (Bradley Cooper), a nomadic Peter Pan, who also still live at home, enjoy sitting around and crowing about the advantages of never having to grow up. For Tripp, the best part of the arrangement is that it affords him the perfect exit strategy from a relationship once a girl flashes him "the look," a signal that's she's smitten. Then it's time to drag the soon-to-be-ex to the house, where she is appalled to discover his living situation and runs for the hills.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF UIP
But Tripp's freeloading days may be coming to an end. Sue and Al have run out of patience with their overgrown baby. Desperate that he move out and live on his own, they hire a specialist in prying spoiled bachelors from the womb. With the introduction of Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) into his life, Tripp meets his match in heartless seduction and manipulation.
The infinitely self-assured Paula has refined her method into a diabolical game plan that includes feigning fascination with a man's hobbies (Tripp's passion is sailing), then creating a bogus crisis in which she tearfully clings to him for emotional support. In Tripp's case, it involves enlisting a veterinarian in faking the death of a beloved dog. Paula's professional rulebook allows for kissing but no sex.
The movie pauses long enough to show Paula working her demonic wiles on a blubbery nerd who lives in a Star Wars fantasy world. The poor chump is a goner. But Tripp, because he's handsome, lean and suave, presents a more formidable challenge.
There is no doubt Tripp deserves everything he gets. Lying through his whitened teeth, he boasts of his amazing (nonexistent) sex with Paula. Explaining his minor injuries after being bitten successively by a chipmunk, a lizard, and a dolphin, they become the battle scars acquired in his supposedly Moby-Dick-size encounters with nature.
The director Tom Dey obviously cherishes 1930s comedies, and he confidently guides a screenplay (by Tom Astle and Matt Ember) that has some of the sass and bite of those oldies through the screwball rapids. It's all about tone. And until the movie succumbs to sugar shock at the end, it remains brisk and tart. McConaughey and Parker (in a role not far removed from Carrie Bradshaw) make well-matched sparring partners.
True to screwball tradition, the subsidiary characters flesh out the comedy. The funniest is Paula's sarcastic roommate, Kit (Zooey Deschanel), who shoots off deadpan one-liners with the aplomb of a curvaceous young Eve Arden. Kit has a thing about birds that chatter all night and keep her awake. And in the movie's best scene, she enlists Ace to shoot an offending mockingbird, and then, overcome with guilt over its possible demise, has him administer mouth-to-beak artificial respiration.
Failure to Launch (the colorless title seems more appropriate to a fizzled liftoff at Cape Canaveral) has its ick factor in the pesky presence of an adorable gap-toothed moppet who accompanies Tripp to sports events. That relationship is explained in a strained back story tacked on to make Tripp more sympathetic. But that's how it goes these days on the romantic comedy planet. An abundance of ice cream is necessary to blot out the taste of spinach.
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