This romantic-comic bauble by Tom Dey has a definite situation, namely a mid-thirties stud still living at home with his parents. If the situation were born of any necessity -- financial, psychological, medical, or otherwise -- the film might additionally have had a subject. But since the situation is only an amorous stratagem, an ace-in-the-hole shameful secret useful for scaring off overserious girlfriends, the film is left with no more than a formula: the burdened parents hire a "professional interventionist" (new synonym for paid escort) to woo their son away from the nest, the wooer soon starts to fall for him in earnest, he sees through the ruse and cuts himself off from both wooer and parents (good question: "Why didn't you just say something? All you had to do was tell me"), and everyone reconciles in the end. More simply, the whole thing is just a piece of exercise equipment for a couple of A-list hardbodies named Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker, the latter of whom could be said to be miscast as a character forever claiming and demonstrating a hearty appetite. Zooey Deschanel, as the sardonic roommate (what lately would have been known as the Joan Cusack character) driven half-mad by a persistent mockingbird, protects herself -- and her "indie" reputation -- behind her idiosyncratic delivery of lines, half-depressive and half-drugged. (If you're not having a good time, well, neither is she.) And Terry Bradshaw, the former football star and current buffoonish football analyst, reveals the desperation of the enterprise by revealing his heinie. Justin Bartha, Kathy Bates. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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