U6
U.S.! by Chris Bachelder
Failure to Launch
In Failure to Launch, Sarah Jessica Parker plays Paula, a woman who is hired to "simulate a romance" with Trip (Matthew McConaughey), in order to encourage him to move out of his parents' house. Of course, Paula falls in love with Trip, and everything you would expect to happen, happens.
"The movie's only an hour long. Nobody's going to pay eight bucks to see a 60-minute movie. We need to make it longer."
And I have no problem with that. Complaining that *Failure to Launch* is unoriginal would be like ordering a pizza and yelling at the delivery boy because it has cheese on it. The problem with the movie is not that it is coated with a hot, melted layer of clichés. The problem is that the movie rushes so quickly through its routine that you never really get a chance to have any kind of reaction to it. I suspect the writers wrote during the commercial breaks of sitcoms, and never bothered to go back and edit.
And then there's the sub-plot I imagine the following conversation took place between the producers and writers:
"Yes,but how?"
"Well...we could add a sub-plot with McConaughey repeatedly getting attacked by animals."
And they did.
Failure to Launch is an enjoyable movie
Kit Fluker
in its smirking, easy-going way.It's too bad no one bothered to separate the chaff from the script. That won't be a problem if you're smitten with Matthew McConaughey (or Sarah Jessica Parker). But if you're not, you should probably get your romantic comedy fix elsewhere.
BOOK
Rated PG-13, 97 minutes South Wind
★★
It's no secret that American politics have reached far into the tar pit. Slanders are thrown, people are humiliated and threats are made. Numerous books by partisan harpies have been published decrying the state of American politics, as it sinks deeper into the sludge. So how, you ask, is this situation rectified?
The solution, Chris Bachelder insists, is to resurrect Upton Sinclair. Sinclair was an American socialist and muckraker, most notably the author of The Jungle, which exposed secrets of the meat industry in the late 19th century. In the novel U.S.I., Leftists keep resurrecting Sinclair to help them bring about a socialist revolution. Why do they keep having to resurrect him? Every time Sinclair is resurrected, the fanatical Right keeps assassinating him.
Obviously, the novel is one big hyperbolic fable. Only about half of it is in narrative prose form; the rest is a mad amalgam of various Americana forms. One chapter is a faux book review
of a novel Sinclair wrote after being resurrected for the fourth time. Another is a letter written by Sinclair to his son.Others are phone call transcripts, letters to the editor or book jacket blurbs. The product is a funny and imaginative yet exhausting affair, as the book bounces the reader back and forth.
Bachelder's indictment of both extremes of the American political spectrum — including Sinclair himself, the epitome of one extreme — is extremely witty and clever, but perhaps too madcap and philosophical for the average reader. It's doubtful most Americans today know who Upton Sinclair even was, nor do many grasp the ideological differences of political theories. A working knowledge of both is required to know what is going on in the novel. The book's major downfall is that it could be too elitist.
In detailing the determination and redundancy of the Left and the ultra-violent hysteria of the Right, Bachelder's final thesis is that every action has consequences, and everything
we do matters.The novel also describes how someone from Texas kills the resurrected Sinclair with a harpoon. If that doesn't make a statement on the state of American politics today, I don't know what does.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Price: $14.95
Available in Paperback 3,5 stars
★★★
Kelsey Hayes
★ You'll wish you were dead ★★ You'll want to leave the theater early ★★★ You'll say "eh" ★★★★ You'll rave to everyone who asks ★★★★ You'll have a religious experience
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18>JAYPLAY 03.16.2006