Which is not to say that most romantic comedies are easier to believe. To the contrary, most of today’s romantic comedies involve the incredible, unbelievable coincidence, such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which involved a man and a woman both making bets with their friends that he could get a woman to love him and that she could make a man break up with her. Yet even in those surreal situations, as they pick people at random, there is still the conceivable notion that, despite the bet, they’ll just happen to pick someone that they fall head over heels for.

Failure to Launch, though, is not merely about a coincidence. There is an undercurrent of bitterness and cynicism here that is inescapable. The only reason Trip (Matthew McConaughey) and Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) ever meet is that Trip’s parents, Al (Terry Bradshaw) and Sue (Kathy Bates), want their 30-something son to finally leave their house. And when at a barbecue they share their gripes with their friends – all parents who also have middle-aged sons living at home – they hear from one couple that they hired Paula to help them with their struggle.

Paula not only has a term for this situation – which she calls Trip’s inability to grow up, or his “failure to launch,” and which some real-world academic types have started to label “emerging adulthood” – but also a rigorous plan of attack. It starts with a cute meeting, as she meets Trip for the first time at a furniture store. It then evolves into a series of dates, a meeting with his friends, an opportunity for him to teach her something, her need for him to comfort her during a period of emotional turmoil, and then eventually the prospect of him moving in with her. There’s no sex, though, she insists – she doesn’t have sex with “clients.”

What’s truly amazing is how funny the film thinks this unfunny premise is, and not just for adults but everyone included in the PG-13 demographic. At least in the coincidence films, there is the genuine thrill of seeing two people starting to click. But here, as Trip and Paula go on their series of dates, including the not-so-formulaic dinner on a yacht and game of paintball, we are always aware that Paula is just playing, and that Trip – kind of a bum in his own right, who uses his living at home to break up with women – is being jerked around by both this imposter and his parents.  

This theme of cruelty doesn’t stop there. Everyone in this film seems like an awful person. Paula is faking her affections. Trip uses women and then throws them away, and admits he lives at home because he loves having his parents serve his every need. His parents go out of their way to hire someone to lie to Trip. The film even seems to be ridiculing the idea of romance, as Paula’s “plan” mocks the notion of what it means to be female and both Trip’s shallowness and his friends’ attitudes reflect the worst of male stereotypes. In a final insult, it even seems to be mocking us as the audience, with an improbable scene of reconciliation playing out on the big-screen TV of a restaurant, watched by a sea of gawking onlookers who fawn and cheer precisely when they’re supposed to.

Sure, there are some laughs here, but the problems stem from the bland structure of a chick flick bumping up against the formula of a dumb guy comedy. “Failure to Launch” keeps straining to be both at once, and as a result creates a crass and unbelievable world full of bitter and jaded people. All the evidence one needs of the struggles Dey faced in tying this all together are the film’s numerous, random animal attacks, involving a chipmunk, a lizard and even a dolphin, not to mention a nude Terry Bradshaw. In a final sign of defeat, Dey has nothing left to offer but the humor of the random. 

Yet at least the critters get us away from this parade of the unlikable. McConaughey is too suave to be sincere. Parker is too shrewd to be sweet. The animals are clearly too aggressive to be cute – though by the end of it all Failure to Launch does stoop to using a cute animal to win our hearts. It’s a mess – a zero-sum game – and the kind of movie that can serve as the ultimate judge of someone’s movie tastes.

Anyone who can digest this movie can eat absolutely any meal Hollywood serves up, no matter how sour, offensive or undercooked it might be. 

I, for one, am sending this one back, asking for a refund and demanding to see a manager.