Failure to Launch Critic Reviews

The movie is one of the best American films in months and months and the best comedy since I don't know when. It even makes you sorta kinda like Matthew McConaughey.Read the full review

"The Family Stone" did nothing for Parker, but Failure to Launch makes a strong case for life after "Sex and the City."Read the full review

The movie brings to mind the more polite parts of "Wedding Crashers." Failure to Launch, while totally exuberant and appealingly made, is not nearly as randy.Read the full review

An especially slight romantic comedy whose modest charms are derived largely from its supporting players.Read the full review

The movie has only the most tenuous connection with reality. But the same could be said of classic 30's screwball comedies in which the treacherous feints and ploys of the mating game are transmuted into witty, romantically charged repartee.Read the full review

Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker look and act, quite attractively, like grown-ups, and their easy rapport makes them convincing and appealing as an on-screen couple. So all throughout Failure to Launch, I found myself wishing they were in a different movie, maybe one as sophisticated as "The Philadelphia Story," which the movie references, but doesn't remotely live up to.Read the full review

McConaughey and Parker get stranded with thanklessly predictable scenes, while Zooey Deschanel, Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw garner the film's few laughs.Read the full review

Thanks largely to Ms. Parker and to the delectable Zooey Deschanel as her anhedonic house-mate, the filmmakers still manage to squeeze some juice out.Read the full review

If you like Kathy Bates movies, you'll probably be frustrated with this one, since as Tripp's mother, the invaluable character actress is made to whipsaw between playing sappy domestic slave to her son's laundry and salty, overly sexual wife.Read the full review