I saw Failure to Launch at the 12:30 showing today, and it's definitely an enjoyable entry into the romcom genre. Just a tip for the tough guys out there, romcoms do not = chick flicks.

FTL is kind of Hitch meets How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days, and stars Matthew McConaughey and a very doable Sarah Jessica Parker as would be lovers, surrounded by goofy friends and family, making this a highly enjoyable madcap farce. Zooey Deschenal was probably the best character, as all of her scenes were off the wall and quite funny, but the entire cast were one finely tuned comedy team.

McConaughey is likeable as Tripp, a 35 year old who still lives with his parents and is afraid of commitments due to a past relationships effects on him. I can relate! His loving parents, played by the always humorous NFL legend Terry Bradshaw (who DOESN'T have a nice ass, by the way...lol) and Kathy Bates, desperately want their grown son to move out, but he has no intentions on it, so they hire Sarah Jessica Parker to go to work on him and make him fall for her so he'll move out and no longer be afraid of moving on with his life.

Along the way, one of Tripp's friends spots Paula (Parker) with another client, and blackmails her into setting him up with her firend (Zooey Deschenal) or he'll tell Tripp, so she does it. Quite a few laughs develope from that romantic adventure.

Anyway, he doesn't tell Tripp, but he tells their other loser friend who also still lives with his parents, and he lets Paula know why Tripp is like he is, and although he hints to her that he won't tell Tripp that she was paid to go out with her, he does, and Tripp is understandingly pissed off at her and his parents.

After he breaks it off with her and let's them all know he found out, their friends and his parents realize that the two of them really did fall for eachother, and they concoct a plan to get the two of them together for real, and it's pretty amusing. In these types of films, you realize if it works by how you feel when the two leads finally do get together, and when they kiss at the end, it definitely creates a feel good, chills go through you, type of vibe, so it accomplishes every goal it sets out to accomplish. Entertaining, likeable characters, and a believeable love connection. Very good romantic comedy.

B (this was bordering a B+, but I think a strong B is fair)

I agree with your take on the movie, mav.

I thought it was a fun movie with an erratic pace. Zooey is a hoot. Nekkid room and the TV monitor scenes got the biggest laughs.

B

A tale of two halves.

It starts off very strong with a very good first half. The chipmunk, the paintball sequence, Zooey Deschanel, even the two main characters are very good. Then it goes off the map once Tripp breaks up with Paula. The film falls into a "Just Friends" scenario (I'm sure there are a lot of movies out there that I am not just thinking of, but this is the most recent example I could come up with). That is to say that the two of them should never have ended up together. Of course though, since its a movie they'll end up together, but in real life, they would probably end up just despising one another. Of course on the other hand though, if this was real life, Paula would be in the unemployment, instead of a high class........ well basically a prostitute minus the sex. And Tripp wouldn't be living at home since he is a 35 year old who seems to be banging girls right from left, and actually has a high paying job. He just lives at home to fit the story.

As I said I thought the movie was very funny in the first half, but once Tripp is bitten by a dolphin, Bradshaw's ass, and the TV monitor sequence at the cafe, I just began to cringe.

C

Other than Matthew's abs, the always-enjoyable Kathy Bates and??? Well... that's all there is to this astonishingly formulaic movie. I thought it would be tough to be worse than I expected. This is one instance where FTL excels.

The plot is so bad it's painful. Matthew should limit his "acting" to his aforementioned abs and the most Pepsodent-white teeth extant. SJP is pretty terrible too, trying to channel a little Carrie Bradshaw and simply ending up being obnoxious. I have to agree with another poster who noted that the friends are so wooden, so unimaginative, and so downright unfunny. They sink this titanic of a dud down even further. The silly animal jokes, the annoying scene in the gun shop (why were they in a gun shop in the first place?), the totally unnecessary paintball game, and the even less necessary mountain biking scene...

Bottom line: SJP should be ashamed of herself for choosing this atrocious role. MM should stick to doing crunches and smiling, and Terry Bradshaw??? Well, he has guts...

It's a shame Kathy Bates persona of Annie Wilkes didn't come to save this movie. She could have cleaned house.

D

there wasnt anything really original about this movie and everything was pretty much predictible. The last half of the movie was horrible.........BUT it was damn enjoyable

Im starting to like Zooey

B

seeing this as my second showing in my weekend doubleheader after the very good V for Vendetta.

I agree more or less with your review - some good parts - but mosting a average romantic comedy.

and I give it a C

Another question is after The Family Stone and now this movie > Failure to Launch.

Does anyone want to see more of Sarah Jessica Parker as a lead actress ( Remember since her tv series is over, guess she will be making more movies )

Tricky marketing this one has

Overall a sweet movie but it had it's flaws just like most romantic comedies.

B


I have seen this movie in order to pay my debt for losing the Walk the Line bet and I must say that I could have certaionly thought of worse films to have been picked. Failure to Launch is definitely your generic run-of-the-mill predictable romcom, but many parts of it are so surprisingly charming and funny that it is really hard to dislike the film. Now there are certain things I wasn't very fond of. Among them the ridiculous animal attacks who I didn't find very funny and/or plausible. Moreover, I never felt like Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey had much chemistry sadly. The chemistry is usually the deciding point in all romcoms.

However, the movie was also surprisingly funny for a romcom. Zooey Deschanel really saves the entire film and I hope to see her in more lead roles in the future. Her character was great and he delivered some of the films funniest bits. Her scenes mostly redeemed the predictability of the movie. The entire subplot with the bird was great, hehe. The TV monitors scene at the end was quite hilarious as well.

The film is generic, yeah, but it passes pretty fast and I never felt bored, so it was worth my money.

C

Where do I start with this. Going into Failure to Launch, mostly from the marketing and the comments here, I was expecting a predictable but enjoyable romcom with a few occasional laughs. Going in, I thought I knew exactly what I'd be getting. Well, I was wrong. The movie felt like it strived to be one of those predictable yet enjoyable romcoms, but it completley failed miserably.

For this genre, this is possibly the most flawed that I've seen in some time. Matthew McCaugheney injected no real character into Trip, we never got to know who he was. He was a watered down and useless version of every better generic romcom hack, including himself previously. Sarah Jessica Parker was bad, she was really really bad. Like, one of the worst performances of the last 3 years bad for me. It would be one thing to have that fake and unbelievable persona, where nothing sounds convincing and every word seemed plastic and forced, if she was using this persona while lying to Trip. In fact, from the first scene on the LA-Z Boy, that's what I thought it was setting up to. But in the scenes without him, she's exactly the same! It's cringeworthy. I haven't seen a performance this bad in a long long time.

The pacing of the movie was slow, and the movie seemed at some times boring. I know some people have already said the movie was predictable, but I have to stress it some more. Everything was so easy to see what would happen, so simple. Like with the mockingbird. I was praying to god that they wouldn't go to the dead-obvious To Kill A Mockingbird joke, but they did! I couldn't believe they'd pray victim to that trap so easily. Another thing about the movie was that a lot of the things that happened were just so...pointless. MM getting attacked by a squirrel, a dolphin, then falling off a cliff. I mean, was that all necessary? And the way they executed these parts were just so random, they see a squirrel then it attacks him. And the Zooey subplots. Yes, she did a great job, and she provided almost all the laughs in the movie, but she took up about 25 minutes of solitary screentime that meant nothing at all to the overall story. They went on for 5 minutes spurts with her going to the gunshop, her hanging with Philip at the apartment, in all those long scenes MM and SJP were in no way involved. The point of a supporting character is to support the cornerstones of the story, not to put here in for random 5 minute scenes that we like "Ok, this was Miranda's day! Yay!". It seemed like a completley different entity, a different movie. It had nothing to do with MM or SJP, at all. People complain about Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson in GNAGL, but this was way more pointless. It was spinning off into to nowhere, completley useless.

Through the entire movie, it just never got engaging. Thanks to MM and SJP, you never believe the characters or feel that they're even remotely real. They have 0 chemistry, and the entire relationship feels so fake. Maybe it was just the fact that Sarah Jessica Parker was THAT bad, in any case, it was the least believable romcom couple that I've possibly ever seen. And if all this wasn't enough, the movie is filled with moments that just make you cringe. "Hit the road Trip" in the end credits made me want to roll up in a ball to die. Please.

Anyways, usually I am not one to give a romcom a bad rating. Usually I find a way to enjoy almost every one. But Failure to Lauch, was...the worst that I've seen in recent memory. Maybe I was expecting another How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days(pretty much my fave romcom), and it's obviously nothing living up to it was why? Or maybe it was just that bad.

Well, the whole substory of Zooey Deschanel still ties into the general plot with his friend changing his life as well. And on top of that, if that was not in the movie and we had 25 minutes more of non-existant chemistry between SJP and McConaughey, it would have been way more boring.

Yes, but they could've handled it much much better. Zooey's subplots felt like a entirely different movie, where she was the total lead and it suddenly became totally focused on her. It was like travelling away to comedic Zooeyland for 5-10 minutes for an intermission break, before reverting back to the regular feature of normal MM and SJP.

But yeah, I basicly agree. Without her, it would've been much more boring. But they could've just...fixed that problem.

B-

Entertaining Fluff thats a damn sight better than many recent romantic comedies.

My full review and I love lamp's 100th article: http://ilovelamp.naturalflux7.com/item/100

"When I went into see Failure to Launch, I brought a bag of sugarcubes and a bucket of carrots to really get into the spirit of the film. Little did I know I'd be finding Sarah Jessica Parker incredibly attractive over the next few hours, and Matthew McHardtospell very, very irritating. Oh and everyone else who Isn't Sarah Jessica Parker or Matthew McShirtless much more entertaining...."

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PS: Wanna see a really good romcom, check out Just like Heaven.

I've heard things too awful about Just Like Heaven to bother.

Namely: Boring, Stupid, Unfunny.

Out of all romantic comedies since I started following movies, It's probably had the worst word of mouth.

Just Like Heaven was good.

ditto. twas alright.

Well, if you listened to WoM, you should have never bothered with Elektra to begin with. See it for yourself. Just like Heaven is the best romcom since Love Actually, in my opinion.

I don't listen to word of mouth in general Lecter.
But when it's as bad as Just Like Heavens then you have to wonder if its worth your $20. Especially when it lacks any real appeal. I was quite surprised it had such weak word of mouth here.
Besides, its out of theaters and waiting for a DVD release now.

Oh and by the way, people gave this much worse feedback than Elektra here anyway.

Thank you!

I think you should see some more.

Name me some and I'll give you my thoughts.

50 First Dates, Somethings Gotta Give and 13 Going on 30 are the last three "really good" romantic comedies I've seen. Failure to Launch was entertaining, but aside from that romantic comedies have been sucking majorly lately.

Rent it. That's what I meant to begin with. You'll see how I was right.