Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Highly entertaining - watch for the cute creatures, December 9, 2006
A light and watchable romantic comedy as it should be. What's new is the parents' desire for the 35-year old son Tripp(Matthew Maconaughey)to leave home and be independent. And when he does, the parents can enjoy or dread their new found freedom.
What impresses me are the cameo appearances of a squirrel, a mocking bird, a lizard and lastly, the dolphins. The irony that those adorable sweet creatures can give one the shock in a lifetime is hillariously presented here. Zooey Deschanel as Kit is also a delightful and refreshing choice as a cool, slightly eccentric pal. They all make the otherwise formulaic romantic comedy interesting.
A happy ending with Tripp and Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) sailing on a wooden boat is truly to be envied.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"We should be celebrating our lifestyle", June 30, 2006
This is an entertaining movie. It's fairly funny and the cast works well together. I don't care all that much for Sarah Jessica Parker as a leading lady, but it doesn't work to the detriment of the film, in this case.
Matthew McConaughey does a really good job with his role as a thirty-something man who refuses to leave his parents' home. He has it made living there, but there is the obvious drawback: women are not impressed with his situation. Once he gets women back home, they are usually sent running. Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw are hilarious as his parents. They are definitely a bright point in the movie. Sarah Jessica Parker comes along to try and get Tripp (McConaughey) to finally move out of the house.
This is definitely not a movie that I would care to own, but it is quite a bit better than most romantic comedies.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"When the animals attack!", July 4, 2006
Totally formulaic and with such an outrageous premise that it's almost impossible to take seriously, Failure to Launch is mostly saved by the charisma of its all star cast, particularly the attractive supporting players who garner most of the film's few laughs. It's a movie that constantly hovers around sit-com territory, even though somewhere in the depths of its mediocrity it presents a very real and disturbing issue - the phenomenon of thirty something males, or "boy men" who still like to live at home with their parents
Mathew McConaughey is Trip, a commitment-phobic 35-year-old whose "failure to launch" means he's still living with his parents in their tidy suburban home, enjoying Mom's egg and pancake breakfasts whilst she contentedly does his washing and tidies his room. Trip is a charming all round nice guy, who sells luxury yachts for a living, but he's also spoilt and somewhat sheltered and he can't keep a girlfriend because they freak out every time he brings them home to meet the parents.
Apparently there exists a profession for women whose job it is to inveigle and seduce these adolescent male adults from the nest - yes it's really true! Sarah Jessica Parker plays Paula, one such "consultant," who fell into the profession a few years earlier when she failed to disentangle herself from a beau from his mom and dad's house. Paula's been hired by Trip's parents - a capricious Kathy Bates and a laidback Terry Bradshaw - to seduce Trip on the assumption his newborn passion will motivate him to grow up and leave home.
No surprises here - it's boy meets girl and accidentally fall in love, boy and girl have a misunderstanding and then eventually come together again. And I'm still not sure whether Trip ever actually moved out of home - maybe he ended up buying the boat! McConaughey and Parker have a great deal of chemistry together, and Parker is always fun to watch, but they are constantly left high and dry with thanklessly predictable scenes.
Zooey Deschanel is, as usual, a standout as Paula's sardonic, possibly manic-depressive roommate, her brand of humor is impossibly dry and she turns the character into a wonderful comic foil. Tripp's only friends, Ace (Justin Bartha) and Demo (Bradley Cooper), also are stay-at-homers and provide some welcome eye candy to the proceedings, especially up-and-coming actor Bradley Cooper. Failure to Launch is pretty much a movie of comic stupidity and distractions, basically aiming for the lowest common denominator in entertainment.
Along with a bunch of stupid - but admittedly cute - pet tricks, the characters play paintball games, go sailing and then rock climbing, they eat lunch in fish restaurants and have silly, petty arguments - there's a real sense of desperation with the writers here - anything to build a false sense of forward thrust into a story that is predictably dead on arrival. Mike Leonard July 06.
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