REVIEWED - FAILURE TO LAUNCH: BY SELECTING a headline-writer's gift as the title for their film, the producers of this doctrinally formulaic romantic comedy have implicitly declared that they care little for what reviewers write. Such affairs are, it seems, critic-proof.

Fair enough, then. Failure to Launch, though better than at least three other films released this week, is a waking nightmare of contrived misunderstandings and shameless sentimentality. It features an unusually awkward performance from Sarah Jessica Parker and - regular readers, aware of this writer's prejudices, will see this coming - a characteristically inert one from Mathew McConaughey. Now, off to the multiplex with you.

The film is firmly in that sub-genre wherein one of the characters - usually the woman, oddly - begins a romantic relationship for some ulterior motive. Perhaps, as in Mr Deeds Goes to Town, she is a reporter seeking information. Maybe, as in The Lady Eve, she just wants money. Whatever the circumstance, the couple will, after a bout of squabbling, eventually contrive to fall hopelessly in love.

In Failure to Launch, McConaughey plays a boat broker (there are such things?) who has never quite managed to move out of his parents' home. Mom and Dad hire Parker to seduce the lad and persuade him to fly the coop. The cynical young woman has performed this operation several times before, but this time, yes, it's different. Smoochy, smoochy. Kissy, kissy.

To be fair, the film is carried off with sufficient cheery goodwill to satisfy people who are satisfied by cheery good will. But the central high concept is far too vague and for long periods the desperate writers are forced to abandon it entirely for cheap slapstick. Seeing McConaughey being repeatedly bitten by wild animals is, sad to tell, not quite as amusing as it sounds.