Matthew McConaughey Blunders Toward Independence in Failure to Launch

I have a mixed track record when it comes to movies starring Matthew McConaughey. Sometimes he’s great, as in his spirited turn as a coach who helps revive a tragedy-struck college football team in We Are Marshall. Sometimes, he makes me cringe, as I’m doing right now as I recall his role as a womanizing sleazebag in the lamentable Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. I feared that I might be veering closer to the latter with 2006’s Failure to Launch, but I decided to give the romantic comedy a try anyway.

Tripp (McConaughey) is a bit of a womanizer too, but at least he sticks to one girl at a time. The commitment-shy boat salesman feels like he’s got it made. Sweep the ladies off their feet, have a little fun with them, invite them home for some hanky-panky… and let them find out that his gorgeous residence actually belongs to his parents. Yes, he’s 35 and still living at home, and his dates all consider that a major turn-off – especially when Mom (Kathy Bates) or Dad (Terry Bradshaw) could poke a head in his bedroom at a most inopportune time. He seems quite content with this living arrangement, but his parents aren’t. They’re ready to be empty nesters. So they call in Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) to help their little fledgling fly the coop.

Paula has built a lucrative career out of getting men like Tripp to fall for her, which motivates them to get on their feet and become independent. She’s got it down to a science, and Tripp is putty in her hands. Their courtship is going so well that she expects to have him out of his house in no time. The only catch? Tripp is not the only one falling in love. Paula has prided herself on her ability to maintain emotional distance; could Tripp’s surprising hold on her ruin his parents’ plan and her career? Will two hearts be broken before all is said and done?

I found the movie’s premise interesting. For a number of reasons, adult children living with their parents is increasingly common in America. There’s almost a presupposition here that no woman in her right mind would ever knowingly date a guy in such a situation, which seems to be overstating things a little. Then again, I may just feel defensive of these fellas since I live at home myself. (The movie also seems to imply that this is chiefly a male phenomenon, but I know several more women who live with their parents than men. Hmm… Do I smell a sequel?) Paula’s tactics seem very effective, though I would think that if she is the main factor in getting a man to leave his parents, there would be a serious chance of him running back to them after the relationship dissolves. In any case, she seems to be setting all these guys up for heartache.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t help finding Paula pretty likable, and I do get the sense that it’s not just about the money. She wants to encourage her unwitting clients to spread their wings a little. Meanwhile, Tripp is a loafer and a ladies’ man, which makes him rather annoying, but he’s also got a respectable job that suits him and a tender big brotherly relationship with a young man he refers to as his nephew. It’s through this boy that we and Paula best glimpse his softer side.

Tripp is aptly named, since he seems to have a special knack for taking pratfalls, particularly when wild creatures are involved, and his hapless buddies Ace (Justin Bartha) and Demo (Bradley Cooper) are the worst wingmen ever on these occasions. Paula’s pal Kit (Zooey Deschanel) is a bit more helpful, though she spends half the movie glowering over the racket made by a mockingbird plaguing the house she and Paula share. Despite her morose countenance, I found her one of the funniest characters and in some ways enjoyed the romantic subplot involving her more than the main one. Bates is funny too as the mom who smothers Tripp with affection but simultaneously wants him out of the house. For her, letting go is a struggle, while Bradshaw’s gruff manner as Tripp’s dad demonstrates that he would be more than happy to see his son venture off on his own.

On the whole, I found Failure to Launch a pretty engaging comedy and far from the worst McConaughey vehicle I’ve seen. It’s a bit silly at times, while at others it’s thought-provoking, prompting rumination over the reasons adults live with their parents and the issues involved in such an arrangement. Mostly, though, it’s just a light romance with a feel-good conclusion and some pretty good laughs along the way.

A Dizzying Cast of Characters Explores Love in Valentine's Day

I was supposed to be a Valentine’s Day baby. Instead, I arrived a couple of days early, which suits me fine, since I tend to have more enthusiasm for Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday I share, than for the holiday that hasn’t been too eventful for me since the end of the elementary school cardboard Valentine mailboxes. Still, I’ve never resented the holiday. I enjoy exchanging Valentines with my parents and a couple of friends, and at some point during the week, I usually make it out to the video store or the theater to catch a sappy movie. Last year, it was Valentine’s Day, a romantic comedy with an expansive cast of characters whose lives intersect on February 14 in, or on the way to, Los Angeles.

Two years ago saw the release of He’s Just Not That Into You, which had a similarly high number of characters to keep track of. Structurally, the two are fairly similar, but Valentine’s Day, directed by Garry Marshall, feels a lot less cynical, celebrating love both young and old and not restricting it to romance, either. While that is a major focus of the movie, it also lauds family relationships, mentorships and general kindness to friend and stranger alike. I found it refreshingly positive.

As with He’s Just Not That Into You, I found myself zeroing in on certain characters and zoning out on others, simply because there were so many. The main character is Reed Bennett, a puppy dog of a florist who absolutely loves Valentine’s Day and who is in an especially exuberant mood this year because his girlfriend has just accepted his marriage proposal. Ashton Kutcher plays Reed, and he surprised me in the role because usually, the mere presence of Kutcher in a movie might be enough to dissuade me from watching. I generally find him obnoxious, but here, he is thoroughly lovable, as is Jennifer Garner, who plays his childhood chum, elementary school teacher Julia Fitzpatrick – though that didn’t surprise me much, as she’s been one of my favorite actresses since her thoroughly endearing turn in 13 Going on 30.

Reed’s idyllic day is about to take a troubling turn. What everyone in the audience realizes long before he does is that his girlfriend is just not that into him – and furthermore, sweet-natured Julia is. But she has a romantic partner of her own, and he has a secret that could wreak havoc on her happiness. Aside from Reed and Julia, I was most interested in Hector Elizondo, always an actor I enjoy, as Edgar, a hopeless romantic still very much in love with his wife after decades of marriage and now ready to pass some wisdom on to his young grandson Edison (Bryce Robinson), who is determined to show the object of his affections just how much he cares. These four characters give us a strong sense of the differences between puppy love, adult romance and mature love that reflects a lifetime together.

Lots of other characters experience love in a variety of ways, too, and it’s fun to see how the different characters interconnect. At the same time, there’s little opportunity to really get to know most of the characters. The movie boasts a dizzying cast list full of familiar names: Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez, Taylor Swift, Shirley MacLaine, Julia Roberts, Larry Miller, Kristen Schaal… There’s scarcely time to pick them out before we’re on to a new scene with new characters to keep track of, and it’s a constant guessing game to figure out what one storyline has to do with the others beyond the general theme.

Some of the situations in the movie are a bit on the risqué side, but the focus here is more often on love than lust, which I appreciated. The film’s biggest flaw is probably that it’s trying to do too much at once. Still, I was more touched than confused by the end of the movie, and while I wouldn't rank it among the best romantic comedies out there, Valentine’s Day makes for pretty enjoyable viewing and may just leave you with a better appreciation of the holiday that inspired it.

Nicholson's Film About a Hollow Man Full of Meaning

My friend and I recently attended a church service as the guests of a couple in a small group Bible study we’d been attending. The study was on Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life, and the church had integrated the study into its services. The week we went, the topic was evangelism, and the sermon concerned reaching out to others outside the Christian community and sharing your faith with them. It concluded with the final scene in About Schmidt, a film I had been wanting to see but still hadn’t yet. Although the scene did not so much illustrate the importance of evangelism, it did demonstrate how the human need for a feeling of purpose is best fulfilled by an assurance that our lives have made a difference to someone else, even if it is just one person. A few days ago, my friend and I watched the movie together, and while much of it was rather dreary and depressing, I ultimately found the film very moving.

This is the movie that afforded us all those glamorous shots of Jack Nicholson looking like something the cat dragged in and promptly ran away from. He’s looking awfully rough here, and with good reason. Warren Schmidt (Nicholson) is a man doomed to the realization that he is 66 years old with nothing to show for it. He retires from a lifelong job at an insurance company, placated by the platitudes heaped on him by a longtime coworker and the young man replacing him. But when he accepts the upstart’s invitation to return to the office and give him a few pointers, he receives the royal brush-off and spies his life’s work sitting in boxes on the curb for the trash man to pick up. He’d looked forward to a cozy retirement with his wife, Helen, traveling around the country in their cushy mobile home, but now that he’s home with her all the time he finds all of her idiosyncrasies intolerable. When Helen (June Squibb) dies suddenly, his marital apathy leaves him with a load of guilt that is only eased when he discovers that years ago, she had an affair with the friend who so eloquently toasted him at the retirement banquet.

So begins a quest of self-discovery that will last throughout the course of the movie. Feeling betrayed, rejected and useless, Warren embarks on a road trip, revisiting the sites of his early life and hoping to rekindle some forgotten memories. But everywhere he goes, it seems life has gone on with no record of his existence. He feels utterly obsolete. Even his beloved daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), about to be wed to a waterbed salesman, Randall (Dermott Mulroney), of whom Warren disapproves, rejects him, and Warren must sit idly by and watch as his daughter marries into an oddball family and out of her father’s life.

Everything in the film points to the emptiness that consumes Warren. The sparse score adds to film’s overall mood of uneasy quietude. Warren himself is largely silent. He appears to be passive-aggressive, always careful not to ruffle any feathers but inwardly seething about the unfairness of his life. This isn’t to say that he is a wholly admirable character. He is very self-centered and used to being taken care of. He doesn’t have the nasty streak displayed by many of Nicholson’s characters, but he also lacks Nicholson’s abundant charm. He’s a hollow man who only truly opens up and allows himself his full range of emotions in his letters to Ndugu, a young African boy he decides to sponsor. Along with 22 dollars a week, he sends the child poignant reflections and virulent rants that the audience hears in voiceover while observing Warren’s activities.

Nicholson is fantastic as the disenfranchised Warren, a decent everyman who feels his life is devoid of meaning. He truly carries the film. Although it is clear Warren despises Randall, I thought Mulroney made the character very likable. A bit of a do-nothing, perhaps, but a very nice guy who loves Warren’s daughter and is always pleasant to Warren in spite of the latter’s thinly veiled hostility. Davis, meanwhile, seemed to go out of her way to make Jeannie unlikable, perhaps to emphasize Warren’s shaky grasp of reality. His sweet little girl is gone, never to return as far as we can tell. Also worth note is Kathy Bates as Roberta, Randall’s libidinous mother, whose much-ballyhooed hot tub encounter with Warren is brief but uncomfortably hilarious. Howard Hesseman, meanwhile, provides humor as Randall’s easy-going, speech-making father, Larry.

But perhaps the real star of the movie is the one who never appears at all, the unseen foil to Warren’s tortured soul. Somewhere on the other side of the world is a little boy named Ndugu who can’t read but understands that Warren Schmidt cares enough to send him money and write him letters. Warren lives a privileged life that is full of disappointments; Ndugu is an orphan who resides in a state of poverty but feels rich because his life has been touched by this hollow man. About Schmidt is a sad movie about a broken man, but perhaps this one-sided correspondence is just enough to help Warren’s emptiness heal.