Also buried inside the film: a dark comedy about an insane con artist and the havoc she wreaks in the name of getting stunted men to grow up. Buried not too deep inside Failure To Launch is a sly, subversive, They Came Together-like spoof that isn’t a tortured romantic comedy so much as a deliriously meta commentary on rom-com contrivances. That’s how the Paul Newman of tomorrow and Dazed And Confused’s greatest scene-stealer ended up being the easygoing eye-candy opposite Sarah Jessica Parker in moronic fluff like Failure To Launch, the 21st highest-grossing film of 2006, and one of the creative nadirs of McConaughey’s career, though for reasons that have more to do with an insultingly idiotic screenplay than the actor’s typically appealing performance.įailure To Launch is such a bizarre, artificial concoction that only the slightest push in the right direction would make it crazed self-parody. He started off with critical respect, acclaim, and hype, and descended into the state of a pretty-boy male starlet trading on his good looks and charm, instead of doing the hard work of constantly evolving as an actor. All he had to do to keep the money train rolling along was show up on set, say his lines, smile that irresistible smile, and take off his shirt at regular intervals. McConaughey didn’t really even have to act in order to continue collecting big paychecks for fluffy popcorn movies. The man made a motion picture titled Surfer, Dude that is exactly what it sounds like.Īs an actor, McConaughey had a problem in common with Tripp: His life was just too easy. But while the films he was turning out weren’t great, they were clearly fun to make, even as each critically reviled turkey brought McConaughey closer and closer to lazy self-parody. Sure, he wasn’t living up to his early hype as the Paul Newman of his generation, or to the brilliance of his career-making character-actor turn as Wooderson in Dazed And Confused. He’s living the sweet life, just as McConaughey was enjoying a pretty damn nifty existence around the time he made Failure To Launch. Yep, everything is all right, all right, all right for ol’ Tripp. At this point, women previously obsessed with Tripp flee his home in such a furious hurry that they leave behind cartoon-style holes shaped like their silhouettes. At night, Tripp beds a series of lovely ladies, and when they get a look in their eyes that suggests they want more from him than no-strings-attached sex, he reveals that he still lives at home with his adoring parents, Al (former football player Terry Bradshaw, in a performance of revelatory nudity) and Sue (Kathy Bates). They live in suspended adolescence and handsomeness. Tripp, played with shirtless, honey-dripping Southern charm by Matthew McConaughey, spends his days sipping cold brews and bro-ing out with his buds: Demo (Bradley Cooper, wearing people clothes), Ace ( Gigli’s Justin Bartha), and Tripp’s adorable-moppet sidekick. In fact, it’s less an actual problem human beings might experience in this universe than the opposite of a problem: His life is just too awesome for words. Tripp, the protagonist of 2006’s Failure To Launch, has a problem that could only exist in a painfully contrived romantic comedy.
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