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 Big-time movie stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey are the captains of the Hollywood ship, Failure To Launch. |
Sarah Jessica Parker calls it "laziness, comfort and ease." She is talking about why some young men never leave home, even after college, getting jobs, or sliding into relationships with women.
"There is a bit of a social phenomenon happening now in America," Matthew McConaughey says of the trend. And it has a name: Failure to launch. It's both comic and pathetic, so Hollywood made a lightweight movie about it.
Failure To Launch co-stars McConaughey as a 35-year-old, stay-at-home slacker, and Parker as the woman hired by his parents to pry the guy out of his comfort and ease. Tom Dey's romantic comedy arrives on DVD tomorrow in a widescreen Special Collector's Edition.
There is a decent lineup of extras of which the most interesting -- even with the offbeat interchange of McConaughey with boistrous Terry Bradshaw, who plays his father -- is the 11-minute featurette on the failure phenomenon. Real-life examples -- and their parents -- are interviewed.
FLAG-WAVING: In wartime, Hollywood churns out military recruitment movies designed to turn even newbie soldiers into American heroes. So it was no surprise when Annapolis, the story of a ship-building sweathog who enrolls in the U.S. Naval Academy, did just that. James Franco plays the angry, mecurial recruit; Tyrese Gibson is the battle-toughened officer who whips him into shape. Justin Lin's competently assembled but tiresome drama is out on DVD tomorrow in separate full and widescreen editions.
ULTRA-VIXEN: Sci-fi movies such as Kurt Wimmer's UltraViolet, starring Milla Jovovich as a death-dealing freedom warrior who wields guns and swords with equal skill, are designed to leave geekboys breathless. So it doesn't matter to the fans that the movie is stupid, softcore pornography disguised to ape a video game.
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It arrives on DVD tomorrow in several editions, including the PG-13 Theatrical Cut that maximized boxoffice with the motto: Don't show too much, suggest everything. Extras include, surprisingly because she rarely talks so much, Jovovich's commentary.
COMEDY CAPERS: Two new comedy DVDs arrive tomorrow.
One is an intriguing historical doc on the roots of Boston stand-up, comic-turned-director Fran Solomita's When Stand Up Stood Out. Solomita looks at the 1978-88 period in Boston when Steven Wright, Denis Leary, Janeane Garofalo, Bobcat Goldthwait, Paula Poundstone and local legends such as the abusive Lenny Clarke emerged from the electric Boston club scene. The fullscreen DVD's bonus material features more stand-up from Wright and the rest of the gang.
The other title is Blue Collar Comedy Tour: One For The Road, which delivers a Washington, D.C., concert with the four low-rent pals Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Ron White and hillbilly slob-comic Larry The Cable Guy. As much as these guys think they're naughty, the edgy stuff is all in the Boston movie. The widescreen Blue Collar DVD has plenty of extras, including behind-the-scenes glimpses.
IF YOU LIKE THAT SORT OF THING: The appeal of cross-dressing, loud-mouthed, big-momma comic and playwright Tyler Perry eludes me. But millions of somebodies somewhere love this guy. And he tickles the funnybone of African-American suburbia. New on DVD tomorrow are Tyler's biggest hits, Diary Of A Mad Black Woman: The Movie and Medea's Family Reunion: The Movie. Both arrive in separate full and widescreen editions, each with plenty of extras to please fans and prode the rest of us into wondering just what it is we are missing.