Monday

If I were to offer you a choice of either cake or death, it's probable you'd choose cake. However, if I offered you Failure to Launch or death, you may end up opting for the latter. But hang on. You might actually enjoy this film. A thirty-five year old man (Matthew McConaughey) still lives with his parents, and so his parents hire a woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) to lure him away into independence. As you can already tell, this sounds a little more bizarre than your average rom-com, treading the murky ground between comedy and legal prostitution. And this is, essentially, where it remains. The movie doesn't fit together, or gel, as a whole commercial package. The lead stars have no chemistry, McConaughey is generally annoying, and the minor characters fit too easily into bad stereotypes. But I did laugh, and I was intrigued by the strange dilemma they found themselves in when (of course) they started falling in love. And there are also at least three genuinely compelling scenes as the film switches briefly into unhappiness (before the happy ending) where the serious performances of Kathy Bates and McConaughey work well. The problem is, though, that strangeness of tone. Mind you, I haven't laughed much harder recently than at the scene between Sarah Jessica Parker and Ben Falcone (Howard in Joey).