Failure to Launch
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| Failure to Launch | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster for Failure to Launch |
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| Directed by | Tom Dey |
| Produced by | Scott Rudin |
| Written by | Tom J. Astle Matt Ember |
| Starring | Matthew McConaughey Sarah Jessica Parker Kathy Bates Zooey Deschanel Justin Bartha Bradley Cooper Terry Bradshaw |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 10, 2006 |
| Running time | 97 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $50 million |
| IMDb profile | |
Failure to Launch (2006) is an American romantic comedy film. It is a loose remake of the French film Tanguy, being solely based on its premise, the overgrown thirty-something child who does not want to leave home.
- Tagline: To leave the nest, some men just need a little push.
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[edit] Plot
Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) is a seemingly successful 35-year-old boat broker, but he still lives with his father Al (Terry Bradshaw) and his mother Sue (Kathy Bates). Whenever Tripp feels a relationship with a woman is getting too serious, he lets her find out he still lives with his parents (who are all too familiar with their son's method). Usually this is so off-putting for the woman that she breaks up.
Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) is an "interventionist" who is hired by parents of grown men still living at home to get the children to move out of the house by making them fall for her and plan to live together. After they move out, she breaks up with them.
Al and Sue hire Paula to make Tripp leave home. However, Paula really falls in love with Tripp. Tripp finds out that Paula was hired and this causes him to break up with her and finally leave home.
Kit (Zooey Deschanel) is Paula's best friend and roommate. Ace (Justin Bartha), a computer specialist and Demo (Bradley Cooper), a nature-loving wanderer, are Tripp's similarly slacker buddies, who also live at home. Tripp also hangs out with Jeffrey (Tyrell Jackson Williams), a young boy. Tripp was going to marry Jeffrey's mother in the past, but she died.
These friends help Tripp and Paula to make up by locking them up together in Ace's house. Many cameras broadcast images through the internet. Ace, Demo, and Kit watch the images in a cafe, first on a laptop, then on a large wall screen, so that other clients of the café can follow everything too. Tripp's parents watch the images at home with Jeffrey, until the images get "x-rated," at which time Jeffrey is told to play outside.
Subplots:
- Al likes being nude at home and practises that after Tripp no longer lives in his house. Sue does not like him to do that throughout the house; therefore, as a compromise, he restricts the nudity to one room, Tripp's old room, which the couple has redubbed the "naked room."
- At first Sue does not mind Tripp living in the house, also because he acts as a buffer when Al is moody or acting weird.
- Kit hates the sound of a mockingbird outside her window. She tries to buy a gun to shoot it, but the salesman (actor and comedian Rob Corddry) thinks she is too unbalanced and believes she wants the gun to commit suicide when she says, "Oh, I only need one bullet." Ace has a multi-stroke pneumatic airgun and helps her. By pumping only twice Ace thinks the shot is so weak the bird will not be harmed, and just flee. However, Kit pumps it more and the bird is almost killed. They save its life with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Kit and Ace then passionately kiss and are in a relationship together for the remainder of the film. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is specifically mentioned in the gun-shop scene, and the "killing innocence" theme of the book has obvious parallels with pushing middle-aged men out of their parents' homes.
[edit] Box office
In its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $24.6 million, ranking first in the United States box office results for that weekend. The film grossed a total of $88.6 million in the United States box office, and € 539,007 in The Netherlands. [1]
[edit] Trivia
- In the Family Guy episode Peter's Two Dads, Peter tries to prove to his father that he is brave by saying that he managed to sit halfway through Failure to Launch.
