Ms. Deschanel Sole Success in Failure to Launch

Halfway through the 2006 movie Failure to Launch, Zooey Deschanel had a scene in this movie where she was walking around in a department store at which point she casually picked up the entire movie and placed it in her pocket. Not that was a whole lot of movie to steal at that point. The plot was boring, the characters -- apart from Ms. Deschanel's, of course -- were less than charming and it became blatantly obvious that even someone as attractive as Sarah Jessica Parker couldn't carry a romcom in which neither half of the main romantic couple seemed all that interesting. Pretty soon I stopped wishing for her to succeed and instead chose to spend my time waiting for Ms. Deschanel to return.

Not that Ms. Deschanel didn't have her share of bad material to contend with -- especially toward the end when the script kept expecting her to do Moe Howard imitations. But she did have her moments and unlike Ms. Parker, I actually wanted to see more of her character even though the movie was not about her (a fact made obvious by the fact that she was not pictured on the above movie poster). Indeed, Ms. Deschanel was the sole reason that Failure to Launch did not leave a bad taste in my mouth. Too bad for her that her TV series New Girl was never all that funny. For a while there, Ms. Deschanel had a lot of potential and for all I know, she might still have.