Tom Dey, 2006, USA, 97 mins
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Bates
Review by Mike Bartlett
No, it’s not a science-fiction disaster movie, as the title implies. In fact, “failure to launch” is apparently psychobabble speak for when a young man or woman refuses to leave the parental nest and set up their own home. In this new rom-com, that means Matthew McConaughey as a happy-go-lucky boat-seller who’s only too ready to let Ma and Pa take the aggro out of life so he can indulge his creature comforts. Trouble is, potential girlfriends are not impressed – Pa walking in and finding them in flagrante is a major turn-off. Enter Sarah Jessica Parker, whose character’s career is one of the most ludicrous ever mooted in film history. She all but prostitutes herself as the perfect catch in order to encourage her client to fly the coop. Cue sundry hilarious misunderstandings as the couple…
Do you know what may be the key American film of the last 30 years? John Carpenter’s They Live! The premise is that aliens have taken over the media and information highways and that hidden in all adverts and programmes are subliminal messages telling us what to do. A cute if throwaway sci-fi gag, perhaps, but it’s become alarmingly prophetic. For what are modern romantic comedies if not the actual embodiment of this idea? Throughout Failure To Launch, whenever we cut to the male characters, they’re engaged in some kind of sport – mountain-biking, surfing, sailing. There’s an obsession with gadgets – the whole climax of the movie is brought to us by a laptop and groovy surveillance equipment. What’s being sold to us here is not character information but a lifestyle choice. And what is this film but an extended riff on how we should lead our 21st-century lives? Leave home, get a job, be successful, buy things, work out, learn how to court the opposite sex, learn how to pleasure the opposite sex…
Those labels, those voices, just like in the Carpenter film, plastered over billboards, being fed to us via the TV signal or the movie projector, encouraging, cajoling, dictating…
……fall in then out of love as the inevitable moment comes when Parker must tell him that she went into it for the money and came out of it besotted. There’s cliché after cliché after cliché – my God, they even use ‘Hit The Road Jack’ for the 54,000th time in their list of carefully selected soundtrack standards. You might think there’s an original touch in the curious eco-subplot where creatures continually attack McConaughey, but it’s really just there to capitalise on the gross-out animal gags so popular in Farrelly Brothers movies. The icing on the cake is that Parker and McConaughey reportedly did not hit it off on set – and their complete lack of chemistry on screen is the unfortunate result.
Why won’t filmmakers learn? Don’t ever put the word “failure” in the title of your movie. It’s too much of a gift to a tired reviewer…
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Paramount Home Entertainment have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of Failure to Launch for 17th July 2006 priced at £19.99.
Extras include:
- The Making of Failure to Launch
- Interview with Matthew McConaughey and Terry Bradshaw
- Failure To Launch Contest
- Featurettes
- Theatrical Trailer
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