| HE'S LEAVING HOME : Tom Dey's 'Failure To Launch' [5/10] |
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| Sunday, 09 April 2006 | |
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Ultimately more fizzle than sizzle, the all-too-aptly-titled Failure To Launch is a thoroughly by-the-numbers romantic comedy built around a naggingly implausible, cumbersomely over-complex central conceit. The starting point of Matt Ember and Tom J Astle's script is the fact that increasing numbers of well-to-do American males in their thirties are choosing to continue living with their parents rather than 'fly the nest.' This is epitomised here by the oddly-monikered Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) who's 35, tanned, buff, with a well-paid job, a fancy car, a taste for extreme sports - and no problem whatsoever attracting members of the opposite sex (or, indeed, friendly dolphins when he's out on the surf with his similarly outdoorsy pals.) He's waited on hand, foot and finger by his sixtyish mother Sue (Kathy Bates, slumming) - but she and husband Al (Terry Bradshaw) are starting to wonder when, or even if, the lad is ever going to depart and let them fully enjoy each other's company in retirement. It's a realistic enough situation, albeit somewhat exaggerated. But Sue and Al's solution to the problem strains credulity and smacks of scriptwriter contrivance: they hire Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker), who has developed a career 'helping' blokes like Tripp to discover the joys of independence. A "professional interventionist," Paula does this by engineering a relationship between herself and the unwitting 'client', who can be thus more easily pried from the proverbial apron-strings. Paula's techniques don't make a great deal of sense on paper, and many of the details remain fuzzy in the movie itself - but director Dey and editor Steven Rosenblum keep proceedings moving along so brisky that we never really have time to dwell on the script's shortcomings. Scenes are mostly short and lively, and the picture clocks in at a brisk 96 minutes - in welcome contrast to recent examples of the genre which have strayed perilously close to a two hour running-time. The leads are suitably camera-friendly in a toothsome, vaguely bland kind of way (they could be feasibly cast as brother and sister) and it's mostly left to the supporting cast to inject whatever flavour and texture the film possesses. With Bates playing it surprisingly low-key, this task is left to indie-cinema refugee Zooey Deschanel (from All the Real Girls) as Paula's gloomily kooky, wine-quaffing flatmate Kit - her 'nervous romance' with Tripp's buddy Ace (Justin Bartha) proving rather more watchable than the central coupling. The scenes in which Kit and Ace deal with a peskily noisy mockingbird outside her window are among the picture's very few laugh-out-loud moments - and it's something of a drag when we return to Tripp and Paula's clunkily predictable shenanigans. Indeed, the parallel romances seem to occupy different movies altogether: the finished product seems to have been through a few rewrites too many, with several angles that are either undeveloped or oddly incongruous (such as the running gag in which the otherwise too-cool-for-school Tripp is bitten by a range of wild creatures.) In general, Ember and Astle are content to pursue the tried-and-tested rom-com route from A to Z, just as director Dey seldom departs from his default mode of safe-hands anonymity - very often falling back on Rolfe Kent's insipid, intrusive score. Failure To Launch is pretty blatant in its inoffensive date-pic appeal to multiplex audiences and DVD renters around the world - such movies occupy a "small-c" conservative genre, invariably concentrating on the well-heeled and impeccably beautiful. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda gives nature a helping hand in the latter regard, often putting a mild, just-perceptible 'gauze' effect on his lens when shooting Parker, who here adheres rather more closely to her Sex and the City persona than she did in the relatively-edgy Family Stone. Anything that might disturb the "mainstream" audience is kept to the sidelines: inter-racial affairs, for example, may be talked about but almost never actually shown. The effortlessly easygoing Tripp, we learn, did have a particularly intense relationship with a black woman some years before - but it's rather telling that the scriptwriters have the fiancee handily expire just before the planned wedding, thus providing the hunk with a tragic backstory that allegedly "explains" his reluctance to commit, mature, and spread his wings. Audiences are unlikely to share Tripp's inertia: though far from lousy, Failure To Launch is so ho-hum viewers will probably have no difficulty heading for the exits as soon as the credits start to roll. Neil Young 7th April, 2006 FAILURE TO LAUNCH : [5/10] : USA 2006 : Tom DEY : 96 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Odeon cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 29th March 2006 - press show |
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