YMMV / Failure to Launch

• Designated Hero:
  • Paula is depicted as someone who helps solve problems by pretending to be in a relationship with the live-in adult until they get a boost and move out of their parent's home. While Paula herself is not evil, the film doesn't take into consideration extenuating circumstances for living at home such as disability and in effect Paula pretends to love these men and manipulates them for money.
    • To be fair, the film later acknowledges some exceptional circumstances, such as how Demo is a traveller who only stays with his parents because he's abroad so often that it would make no sense for him to waste money on a home he wouldn't be in most of the year.
  • Kit. She's a borderline alcoholic, something arguably and potentially worse than being a Basement-Dweller, yet the film doesn't call her out on it. She wants to kill a mockingbird simply because it keeps following her - to the point that she warms up to someone who gives her a BB gun to kill it. Let's just say that alcoholism and access to firearms is a bad mix.
  • Tripp's parents seem to have no sympathy at all for the fact that he's still grieving the woman he was going to marry, and even maintaining a relationship with his would-be stepdaughter. They don't even think to let Paula know this is the major reason he's in such a funk, leaving to numerous Innocently Insensitive moments until she finds out. The whole plot could have been avoided had they just had an honest and sympathetic conversation with him.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After the recession hit two years after the film came out, many adults were forced to move back home after losing their jobs or not being able to afford places of their own.
  • History repeated itself a decade later when COVID-19 shut down economies worldwide, causing mass layoffs and stock market crashes. Many adults moved in with their parents due to no longer being able to afford living on their own, or just to shelter in place together.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: As Nathan Rabin pointed out, the film has a considerable similarity to Matthew McConaughey's own career where he was often criticized for not living up to his talent before launching a major comeback which included an Oscar win.
• Informed Wrongness: Tripp's refusal to move out of home is treated like an aberration and everyone rallies to change his situation.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: We're intended to see Tripp as being massively flawed for still living with his parents and expected to agree with everyone else's frustration with him. The problem is that Tripp seems to be pretty successful for someone who doesn't live on his own. Also, he's played by Matthew McConaughey, whose natural charm and immense charisma make it difficult to agree with the film's assessment that Tripp desperately needs to change.

---