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Friday, March 10, 2006

Little wind in the sails of 'Failure To Launch'

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
P-I MOVIE CRITIC

Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) is a 35-year-old yacht salesman, outdoor adventurer and playboy who has so structured his life around having fun, being taken care of and avoiding responsibility that he has never moved out of his parents' house.

  MOVIE REVIEW
 

FAILURE TO LAUNCH

DIRECTOR: Tom Dey

CAST: Matthew McConaughey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Bates, Zooey Deschanel

RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for sexual content, partial language and nudity

GRADE: C-

LINKS/TRAILERS

PHOTO GALLERY

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Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) is a "professional interventionist" -- a young woman who has made a job out of luring boy-men like Tripp away from the nest by pretending to be attracted to them, and thus giving them the self-confidence they need to break the family tie.

In the romantic comedy, "Failure To Launch," Tripp's frustrated parents (Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw) hire Paula to do a number on Tripp but, of course, he's such an incredible hunk that she falls for him in the process, and ... well, you can pretty much guess the rest.

In an effort to disguise the extreme thinness of this premise, the filmmakers have surrounded the stars with much visual absurdity, a large ensemble of wacky supporting characters, and a whole zoo full of biting animals that seem to have escaped from a Farrelly brothers movie.

Somehow the screwball concoction does not jell. The stars are pleasant but unexciting, the goofy ensemble has a few moments of hilarity but never catches fire, the laughs are very scattered and the film's title is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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