Produced by Scott Aversano, Scott Rudin Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zooey Dechanel, Kathy Bates, Bradley Cooper, Justin Bartha, For a movie which at first glance looks as though it’s going to be a predictable, broad-based romantic comedy with stereotyped characters, Failure to Launch is surprising on a number of fronts. The writing is clever, the characterization crisp and layered, the story-line deep enough to support some unexpected and subtle character revelations, and the chemistry between the main actors flows well. The direction is deft, the pacing nicely judged. The humour is not obviously contrived but more situational, and these are not predictable. Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) is still living at home at 35, fully cognisant of the benefits and exploiting them quite cynically. His long suffering parents Sue (Kathy Bates) and Al (Terry Bradshaw) are aware that as soon as he brings a girl home (invariably with the identical dialogue when they first get out of the car and approach the large, double storey house), the girl is getting dumped. Sue does his cleaning, his laundry and cooks for him. Why would he ever leave? And a more telling question might be, why does she keep doing it when she says she want him to leave? In a departure for McConaughey, his character is an unlikable manipulator, albeit with a pleasant breezy manner, and it’s quite a risk to have a main character so unsympathetic at the start. However, like life, in which we might make a snap judgement about someone, disliking them on sight, the people in this movie unfold their pasts to explain their present behaviour, and show they are capable of change, so we too can change our minds about them. We just have to get to know them better. Sue and Al find it so awkward to talk to Tripp about moving out – mainly because Sue is still protecting him from a past tragedy – that they hire Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) to get him to date her, fall in love with her and hopefully, eventually, move out. Just how she plans to do this, and why she’s in such a job to start with, is another of those character elements that feels slightly skewed but which fits, given her background. The other characters in the story are Tripp’s two co-conspirators in perpetual adolescence, his friends Ace (Justin Bartha) and Demo (Bradley Cooper) – who are also living at home, and are not quite what they appear to be, either, thank God – and Paula’s prickly, mood-swinging flatmate Kit (the wonderfully out-of-left-field Zooey Deschanel). A dysfunctional family system is a closed loop of cause and effect in predictable, perpetual repetition. Each person exploits a situation for a hidden benefit, even though they might outwardly complain about it. Person A behaves in a certain way to get Reaction X from Person B, who reacts to get Reaction Y from Person C, who reacts to get Reaction Z from Person A and so the loop repeats itself. Thus Sue overmothers Tripp to protect him from his painful past; Tripp exploits that to be less independent than he could be, letting her do his cooking, cleaning, washing etc. When the girls he dates get serious, he brings them home, where they are aghast at his not being his own man and dump him (though in fact he’s manipulated them to do just that, so he doesn’t have to dump them), resulting in his never having to move out or change. And Sue continues to do what she’s always done. However, when Sue looks more deeply at why she’s saying she wants him out but behaving in such a way to keep him at home, it’s for an entirely different reason, one far more personal to her. When Tripp and Paula both look more deeply at why their relationships are chronically brief – or in her case, purely professional – there are more personal reasons than those that appear on the surface. Basically, what motivates these people, who are a lot like us, is fear. Most of the actual cases of the so-called ‘boomerang generation’ or ‘failure to launch’ grown-up kids, also called ‘adultescents’, are far less personable and far more dysfunctional than Tripp – as evidenced in another of Paula’s unwitting ‘clients’. Nevertheless the film’s lightness is an advantage in highlighting a situation that has become a phenomenon in today’s society. It shows plausibly how it all came about by gently peeling away the layers in a humorous and original way. When the characters move out of their stuck situations, it’s because the communication has started or improved to be more honest, fears are being faced and dealt with, and the future looks so much more hopeful (and interestingly unpredictable, instead of scarily so). One of the terrific running gags in the film is that whenever Tripp is out in the wild with Ace and Demo, he gets bitten – first by a chipmunk, then by a dolphin, then by a lizard. It’s great because it gives us the feeling that he’s getting what he deserves, so we can laugh at him instead of merely suffering him, and secondly it illustrates what Demo helpfully spells out for him, referring to his still being in the nest: “Your life is fundamentally at odds with the natural world, and so it keeps rejecting you.” It’s a neat plot twist that Tripp is manipulated by Paula, who survives by exploiting existing dysfunctional situations just as he does. A subplot involving Ace and Kit and a mocking bird outside Kit’s window is hilariously funny and original. With believable and even touching performances, it’s a film that’s well worth it all round. © Avril Carruthers 20th March 2006
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