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07 / 12 / 2008
Fantasy Rally: The final Fantasy Rally results are in - we have a winner! See how your team fared or see the Rally GB results.

05 / 11 / 2008
Review: After the gruelling James Bond press junket tour, I bet Daniel Craig could use a Quantum of Solace.

23 / 10 / 2008
Review: Brad Pitt steals the latest from the Coen brothers: Burn After Reading.

23 / 10 / 2008
Review: Simon Pegg learns How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

23 / 10 / 2008
Review: Ben Stiller directs stars aplenty in Tropic Thunder.

12 / 10 / 2008
Review: A few words on some recent movies: RocknRolla,
Death Race,
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army,
Space Chimps,
Stuck,
The Babysitters,
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder,
Son of Rambow,
Jack and Jill vs the World,
Made of Honor,
Meet Dave,
Doomsday,
Pathology.

15 / 08 / 2008
Review: You can mess with Adam Sandler, but You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

15 / 08 / 2008
Review: Mike Myers tickles some chakras in The Love Guru.

14 / 08 / 2008
Review: Toot and come in, it's The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

14 / 08 / 2008
Review: You can stop watching the skies now, it's The X Files: I Want to Believe.

31 / 07 / 2008
Review: Batman Began and now continues in The Dark Knight.

24 / 07 / 2008
Review: The Chronicles of Narnia continue with Prince Caspian.

23 / 07 / 2008
Review: Pixar goes Short Circuit with Wall-E.

22 / 07 / 2008
Review: Jules Verne never envisaged a 3D version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: Jet Li and Jackie Chan team up in The Forbidden Kingdom.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: Will Smith keeps the streets safe and smelling of booze in Hancock.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: M Night Shyamalan's latest, The Happening.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: Spanish creepy-creepy The Orphanage.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: A quick catchup of movies that don't get the full treatment:
Be Kind Rewind,
Street Kings,
What Happens In Vegas,
Superhero Movie,
The Ruins and
Teeth.

08 / 07 / 2008
Review: Bend that bullet Angelina! Wanted.

01 / 07 / 2008
Review: Those cats were fast as lightning - Kung Fu Panda.

24 / 06 / 2008
Review: Don't make Ed Norton angry - The Incredible Hulk.

24 / 06 / 2008
Review: Carrie and Big's wedding, it can only be Sex and the City.

11 / 06 / 2008
Review: Everyone's favourite pot-addicts are back in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

04 / 06 / 2008
Review: Harrison Ford returns in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

04 / 06 / 2008
Review: Tube driver seeks suicidal man in Three and Out.

18 / 05 / 2008
Review: CGI fantasy motor racing in Speed Racer.

18 / 05 / 2008
Review: Your creases will fly away with Iron Man.

18 / 08 / 2005
Sudoku! Have a go at the online Sudoku game.

Plenty more
See the rest of the reviews here.

Failure To Launch

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zooey Deschanel, Kathy Bates, Terry Bradshaw, Justin Bartha, Bradley Cooper. Directed by Tom Dey. Story: Parents hire a woman to seduce their son in order to persuade him to move out. Running Time: 1hr 37 minutes. UK Certificate 12A.

Somewhere in a parallel universe there is another Matthew McConaughey, and in this universe he makes a movie that isn't arse-clenchingly terrible. This, however, is our universe, so RUN AWAY and watch anything else instead of this bollock-kettle of insipidness.

OK, EDtv was quite good, but that's a shining light compared to the string of turds that "Muh-Connor-Hay" has done since - most recently Sahara and Two For The Money. Combine him with Sarah Jessica Parker - the face of a baboon caught in a lift door - and the movie is doooomed from its launch. Hmmm, I wonder if that's where the title came from. Ms Parker is known for playing manipulative selfish harpies, who somehow are hailed as powerful independent women and seen as characters to aspire to, and Paula is no exception. Paula thinks it admirable to be paid by parents for making their sons fall in love with her, just so they will move out of the family home, whereupon she moves on. I'm frankly disgusted that this is supposed to be a light-hearted - let alone believeable - axiom for a "comedy" and it genuinely disturbs me that the audience is expected to think it's OK to behave like this. If women are really like this underneath then I'm going gay.

Which leads me conveniently to the script. Allegedly it was written by two men - Tom J Astle and Matt Ember. If this is true, I hope they're not still in the closet because there's absolutely no way that any heterosexual male has come within a paragraph of this script. The interplay between the two leads feels like it's written from the perspective of someone who's learned heterosexuality from a book. The relationship is completely unconvincing, the "funny" scenes are almost painful in their failure to inspire any kind of titter and the supporting characters have no depth or novelty. Fortunately the actors themselves are far better than the script deserves, which redeems things somewhat and makes the viewer yearn for the leads to bugger off and let the bit parts do their stuff. Kathy Bates is always reliable and teams up well with Terry Bradshaw as the parents keen to see off their shiny-pecced son and Zooey Deschanel (Trillian from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) is best of all as Paula's acerbic sister. Oh, and there's one good line, in the vet's surgery. But, as the marketeers were clearly struggling for material, they've already ruined that one by having it on the trailer.

Failure To Launch is stunningly bad in every area except the acting, which is actually pretty good. In trying to be a female Hitch, it misses the point by a country mile and ends up as a damning indictment of the scriptwriters' inability to mix with proper grown up people. I can't see either men or women getting anything out of this - bizarrely, I see it appealing more to the gay man. There you have it - Failure to Launch is a queer's eye on a straight guy.

I enjoyed this film: 1/5

I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: 2/5

Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: 0/5 - at one point the dialogue suggests that we're supposed to be able to see Zooey Deschanel's boobs - but we can't. No such problems with Terry Bradshaw's wobbly arse though. Shudder. Sarah Jessica Parker tries everything to draw our attention to her boob job - well, anything rather than look at those malevolent weeny little eyes.

To enjoy this film you should be: Jack from Will & Grace.