Failure to Launch: Failure to Make a Decent and Original Film

When you see this movie, you might think to yourself, "Wait… didn't I already see a movie where Matthew McConaughey was duped by a woman that he eventually ended up falling for? Didn't we see those exact same facial expressions at least once before?" The answer is yes, and the movie so strikingly similar was How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, a far better movie than this one because of the more charming Kate Hudson and what was, at the time, a slightly less recycled plotline.

As is, Failure to Launch is a standard boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl story with the popular Hollywood twist wherein he never really has the girl in the first place. Trip, played by McConaughey, is a 35-year old man who has never moved out of his parents' house, has had his heart horribly broken by circumstance, and who falls for Parker's character, who was hired by his parents to date him and ultimately get him out of the house. Parker's character, also in possession of a past filled with pain and strife, has simplified love to a basic formula, a set of steps to win over someone's heart. Shockingly, they fall for one another amid a relationship of deception, and when the truth comes out, their relationship is challenged. At this point, I'm not sure that I can even count the number of movies with the exact same plot, but I can think of a few that did it better than this film could ever hope to.

More than anything, Failure to Launch comes off feeling an awful lot like an episode of Sex and the City; the film is so terribly predictable from beginning to end that it's as though you can hear Carrie Bradshaw-esque commentary anticipating every scene. McConaughey and Parker are giving us absolutely nothing new. Some of this is surely do to a script so terribly similar to their previous works, but it certainly comes off feeling like sheer laziness on the part of the cast after a while. Even Kathy Bates, who has delivered strong past performances dramatic and comic alike, seems to be recycling the gestures and expressions of former roles, rather than striking out into something new. The one redeeming bit of acting in this film is done by Zooey Deschanel, who delivers an offbeat and quirky character with a surprising amount of grace. I found myself looking forward to her scenes, because they at least would have some measure of depth.

The movie's best scene, by far, is the paintball scene. It has the action that the rest of the film lacks and manages to be both interesting and funny. This scene, however, only lasts for a few minutes, just long enough to make the audience realize that it would be far more entertaining to see the cast playing a game of paintball for an hour and a half. It would come across as far more sincere than the vast majority of this film.