The last decent studio romantic comedy came, to the best of my recollection, from the pen of Nora Ephron at a time when the zoetrope reigned and moving pictures were thought the work of the devil. Weird then, that this unlovely genre proliferates while we wait entire decades for a western to trot along. (Then, wouldn’t you know it, Brokeback Mountain, The Proposition and The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada arrive pretty much all at once.) Still, you can see the logic. Rom-coms are cheap to knock out, guaranteed returns from homely office girls seeking to zone out on Friday evenings and they virtually assemble themselves.
The product coded Failure To Launch melds the southern slacker charms of the unit known as Matthew Mc Conaughey to the uptown girl sass of Sarah Jessica Parker. Throughout, they barely look at one another, let alone blaze up the screen. He’s a boomeranger, a 35 year-old yacht salesman still living at home with mommy (Bates) and daddy (Bradshaw), safe in the knowledge that potentially serious girlfriends will take to the hills as soon as dad barges in to the bedroom. It’s all going swimmingly until he meets SJP, who barely bats a dyed eyelash at his loser friendly living arrangements. Her nonchalance, however, is not down to gooey devotion. She’s a professional lifestyle facilitator (though I can think of some other names) hired by mommy and daddy to lure their outsized offspring out of the family nest.
Any potential for drawing dark domestic meltdown comedy from this set up is quickly jettisoned in favour of a series of date related vignettes involving either the saleable leads or their mandatory, though far more interesting kooky best friends (Zooey Deschanel and Justin Bartha). Here they are at the paint-balling range. Now they’re at a fish restaurant. In between dates, he talks to his friends about her, while she talks to Zooey about him. (Why exactly is a 40 year-old woman asking a 25 year-old girl for advice?) Elsewhere, people fall over or are repeatedly attacked by animals in a ‘comical’ manner.
Then Matthew finds out the truth and dumps her. Will they be able to patch things up? Well, didn’t you read the product description?