Matthew is Trip, an easygoing 35year old broker of luxury sailboats in Maryland who avoids commitment and still lives with his parents. His mom (Kathy Bates) continues to baby him, cleaning his room and cooking breakfast for him. His dad (Terry Bradshaw, a former football quarterback) helps him get out of his relationships that have become too serious for comfort by barging in while he’s making love with his current squeeze. His parents actually want him to get out of their home, and this story is something Pinoys cannot relate with easily, as it’s so common for us to have extended families where even married sons and daughters continue to live with their parents.

Trip’s best friends, Ace (Justin Bartha, Nicolas Cage’s sidekick in "National Treasure") and Demo (Bradley Cooper, "Wedding Crashers"), are just like him: still living with their own parents. His parents, in turn, hang around with a group of old folks who have the same problem with their sons. (This doesn’t seem realistic in the U.S. where young people want to fly away as soon as they’re 18.) It’s in a party where there’s an elderly couple that just succeeded in evicting their son that they learn about Paula (Sarah.)

Paula is somebody like Will Smith in "Hitch", a ‘professional interventionist’ who makes the single sons of her clients fall in love with her and then she gives them a push to move out. She calls their condition of not leaving the nest "failure to launch." The plan is for Paula to seduce Trip and make him fall for her, then she’ll make him change his lifestyle. But this is easier said than done as Paula breaks her own rule of not sleeping with a client when she goes to bed with Trip.

When Ace finds out the truth about Paula from her weird but charming roommate, Kit (Zooey Deschanel), things end badly when Trip is informed about it. (Well, you know, the film needs some conflict to make it more interesting.) But by that time, you also know that Trip and Paula have already fallen in love with each other, even if it doesn’t look believable at all, and their friends and relatives then try their best to get them back in each other’s arms again.

The script is an awful mess and the comic style of Director Tom Dey ("Shanghai Noon") is so forced that no one was laughing at all as we were watching the movie. Even that bit about Trip being bitten by a chipmunk, a dolphin, and a lizard does not come out humorous. Even Trip’s dad turning the room his son vacated into "a naked room" where he can roam around nude in front of the camera is not funny at all, unlike when Kathy Bates bared her all in "About Schmidt" with Jack Nicholson that got a lot of good laughs. The difference, of course, is that ‘About Schmidt’ is a much more superior film. Or maybe it’s McConaughey who should have walked around butt naked and the female members of the audience would appreciate it more.

Actually, the most interesting character in the movie is Kit, who has an ongoing battle with a mockingbird that makes all sorts of noise outside of their window. There’s even a cute reference to the award-winning novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird". Kit eventually falls for Ace and their romance, to be honest, is even funnier than that of Trip and Paula. Ace even gives mouth to mouth resuscitation to the bird that later bites his nose, just like what animals do to Trip.

McConaughey was once considered a promising actor in "A Time to Kill" with Ashley Judd. He tried doing action-adventure in "Sahara" but it didn’t work very well. "How to Lose a Guy" is his only hit romantic comedy. People Magazine named him the Sexiest Man Alive, but even his "The Wedding Planner" with J. Lo was a dud. He still has magnetic screen presence, but he should ask his agent to get him better meatier projects. As for Sarah Jessica Parker, she should stick to the boob tube. On the big screen, it’s so easy to see she’s no great beauty and why someone like McConaughey (or Luke Wilson in last year’s "The Family Stone") will fall for her is something difficult to imagine, even if she’s Carrie Bradshaw.

The film is so boring it never really lifted off the ground and is indeed one big failure to launch.