A overgrown mama's boy who hasn't found the courage to take flight from the nest gets a little help from the girl of his dreams in the one comedy that proves it's never to late to strike out on your own. Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) may have hit thirty, but that doesn't mean that he's ready to give up the many benefits of living at home with mom (Kathy Bates) and dad (Terry Bradshaw). His desperate parents have had enough though, and after years of gentle nudging they soon realize that it's going to take a concerted effort to get Trip out and enjoy their twilight years in peace. Realizing that their only hope for ridding themselves of their reluctant-to-leave offspring rides on the off-chance of his meeting the ideal female companion, mom and dad enlist the help of a beautiful and talented woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) in providing the romantic incentive needed to finally get their son out of the family home.

The problem isn’t that you haven’t seen this movie nor that you are fairly intimate with its concept, it’s the fact that you have seen it a hundred times and in a hundred different ways some good, some bad and some mind numbingly horrific. Have you seen How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, or maybe 10 Things I Hate About You or possibly Hitch well then you have seen Failure to Launch. Sure the movie tries to pass itself off as something new, this time it’s the parents who are trying to get their 35 year old son to movie out but everything after that is so predictable I think I was guessing lines before they even said them. You know that they are going to fall for each other but get mad when they find out they are scamming each other, then have a tremendous fight and then get back together in a touchy feely moment where I try to pretend the screen writer isn’t a hack and keep from vomiting in my shoes. Did I just ruin the movie for you, of course not it would be like me telling you Darth Vader is Luke’s father that cat was out of the bag ten years ago and shame on you if you didn’t see it coming or that it was even done very well. Oh, the movie is cute and not as terrible as I have been making it sound because even it relizes that everyone knows the story and falls to the failsafe of a little slapstick.

It has been written there are now new ideas, I beg to differ there are no old ideas that haven’t been beaten like a dead horse where they remake them over and over and over and over and over again. I always watch these movies and wonder why females flock to them like ants to a picnic, I mean maybe Sarah Jessica Parker could have lit Mathew McConaughey on fire then got into a car chase with him just to wake up the middle of the movie and keep the men from rioting. One good thing could be said about this movie at least I didn’t have to hear any Brokeback Mountain jokes for two hours my first peaceful non Brokeback moments in a month. And at least the movie wasn’t a steaming pile of horse manure like When a Stranger Calls or Date Movie. At least on occasion I smiled as I dreamed of animals (this is a running gag in the movie) torturing and murdering Mathew in a gruesome fashion so he won’t do Failure to Fly in 10 Days While Losing a Girl Whom I Hate All the While Trying to Get Hitched While My Heart Goes On. I should be nicer it was an ok movie but even now I am still flummoxed how somebody could pass this clichéd movie off and get it made, so if you got a girl see it with her then make her go to something much better with you as payback for seeing Failure to Launch.

The second problem of the movie is there is more chemistry between Jake and Heath ala Brokeback Mountain (damn Brokeback jokes even I can’t resist) then there was between Sarah and Matthew. In fact I’d rather watch Jake and Heath make another go at it then watch Sarah Jessica Parker pretend she can act and that she is even remotely interested in Matthew when I think my fire lighting scenario might be more likely. You know who saved the movie for me Zooey Deschanel, who is cute in a manic kind of way. I mean I kept hoping for her to go postal on Sarah’s character kill her and run off with Matt that would have certainly got me to sit up and pay attention. But you can’t have that kind of mayhem in a formula movie it would be like having two likeable characters with some chemistry as your romantic couple and that’s bad very bad indeed. So like little wind up toys the movie marches on, Matt doesn’t die, Zooey doesn’t rescue the day, Sarah never even tries to pretend to be a good actress, you get to see Terry Bradshaw’s wonderful white wrinly old arse three times all the while consuming popcorn like a chipmunk storing for the winter since there is nothing better to do most of the movie and maybe the female in your life will let the next movie you see be one with a plot.

Grade: C-