Failure To Launch

4 out of 7

Its tough to screw up a romantic comedy with two of the most attractive people in cinema today, but Failure To Launch (2006) comes eerily close to doing so. The film, which stars Sex in the City goddess, Sarah Jessica Parker (as Paula), and Texan stud, Matthew McConaughey (as Tripp), delivers an odd plot that never gets fully fleshed out.

The main problem with the film is that the viewer is supposed to join in on the woes of Tripp’s parents – Sue (Kathy Bates) and Al (Terry Bradshaw, of all people) – as they try to get their son to leave home. Yet, because the film starts with Tripp and his friends talking about how they love living at home, the narrative perspective gets a little screwy, so that when the parents begin to complain with other parents who have the same problem, the scene feels out of place. The viewer doesn’t know who he/she is supposed to side with, but all the sudden he/she is thrown into a plot with the parents against their son.

The plot is, of course, to hire Paula to come and woo Tripp away from living at home. Her diagnosis for his syndrome is “failure to launch,” a convenient term given Tripp’s profession as a boat salesman and his love for the open seas. Her confidence is all there and she’s had success in the past with a certain formula (a formula that treats men like dumb animals…whether justified or not, I will not commentate). The steps include making him like her (easy enough, she is beautiful), making him enjoy her company (by just liking whatever she likes), never having sex (it demotivates men…maybe the most honest point to the whole film), having the man help her through a trauma (faked, of course), getting the friends to like her (complete with “the nod” – you’ll just have to see it to understand) and then allowing the man to teach her something. Tripp clips along through all these steps nicely, but a few problems begin to arise, chiefly, Paula is falling for Tripp.

Of course, one of Paula’s rules is to never sleep with her clients, but once she realizes that she’s fallen for Tripp and that, subsequently, he is about to dump her (its his modus operendi for dealing with women), she breaks this rule, but under the justification that its to keep his therapy going. The problem with this is that it is supposed to be the physical representation of the turn in the film, with the turn being that Paula actually likes a man instead of wanting to fix a man. The turn, emotionally, happens while at sea and is believable enough. The turn, physically, happens with the sex, but is unromantic, unsexy and plain disappointing (she was on Sex in the City and while she never bared all, the average viewer has seen what SJP can do in bed). Again, this is just another little chink in the armor for the film.

Naturally, too, when it rains, it pours and Paula is discovered for who she is by Tripp’s friends, who then tell Tripp. AND Paula discovers (and this is the real twist to the film’s plot) that Tripp lives at home because a woman he was once going to marry, Amy, died suddenly. After which, he moved back with his parents. Now Paula knows that she must end the treatment (he isn’t, after all, your normal slacker, loser) as there are just too many elements working against it (including, still, her own attraction to him). Tripp, however, having been told about the whole plot by his friends, makes a big production out of ending it with Paula and letting his parents know that he discovered their little rouge to move him out.

So the whole thing is off and Paula is moving back in with her parents (oh the irony). This is when Paula’s roommate, Kit (Zooey Dreschanel), and Tripp’s friends and family conspire to get the two back together, which ultimately leads to maybe the only worthwhile part of the film. While planning to get the two back together, Kit’s boyfriend/Tripp’s friend (another little sub-plot), Ace (Justin Bartha), recommends that they send flowers to one saying its from the other and vice versa. He gets laughed down and the plot they settle on is to knock Tripp unconscious, tie him up and hide him in a closet. Then, Kit takes Paula to the place where Tripp is tied up and hidden and they lock her in the room. The play on the traditional sappy means of reconnecting lovers (ala Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail) is thrown out the window for a much more realistic trickery and bondage plan. Ultimately the two can talk out their differences and fall madly in love.

Failure to Launch is a fine date movie if your significant other likes those sorts of films. The acting isn’t terrible and there are some genuinely funny scenes that I did not highlight in this review (it should be noted, at least, that funny men Patton Oswalt and Rob Corddry both have small roles). The main problem is that the director leans too much on the viewer’s understanding of the genre and as such, while the viewer knows what he/she is supposed to feel, he/she doesn’t necessarily feel it. For those wanting to write a romantic comedy, this is often a problem, so keep in mind that the leg work of establishing a solid point-of-view and creating a complex, but believable plot must be undertaken or the whole film should be scrapped.