The MCCONAUGHAUPS
This weekend, a few friends embarked on a voyage of romance, adventure, and discovery all from the comfort of our computer rooms. We came together to achieve something that, to my knowledge[1], has never been achieved before. We experienced the MCCONAUGHAUPS: a two-day marathon of every 00s romantic comedy that starred Matthew McConaughey.
The germ of the idea formed when I read somewhere that Matthew McConaughey, today known for his dramatic roles on the big and small screen, had spent his early stardom almost exclusively in chick flicks. It was, in fact, a conscious attempt to flee this typecasting that led him to refuse further roles as romantic leads beginning around 2010 and eventually through force of will mold his career into what we know today.
Now, I have no particular affection for the man. I would say I hadn't thought about him much at all prior to this event. But I do consider myself quite a fan of the rom-com genre, and having watched only a single one starring him my curiosity was piqued. What does it look like for a man to spend a decade in a genre, and what does it take for him to swear it off completely afterwards? I had to know.
I managed to talk a few friends into joining me, and together we trekked into the unstoppable flood of affable grins and light Texan drawls that was the MCCONAUGHAUPS. And now that it has come to a close, please allow me to present you with the fruits of our excursion: a thoroughly-researched ranking of all six of Matthew McConaughey's 00s rom-com feature films.
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Tiptoes. A film whose existence is baffling, but not as baffling as the choices that went into making it. This only barely counts as a rom-com to begin with; only the first third of the film and the unwelcome sprinkling of fart jokes through the rest of it are at all comedic, and the rest is a dour drama about a man (McConaughey) who hates himself and his family. Glad I watched this with friends because it would have been unbearable alone.
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Failure to Launch. A deeply stupid film where one of the running gags is that various animals bite Tripp (McConaughey) and then visibly chuckle to themselves about it because he hasn't yet achieved inner harmony. Portrays him as a layabout loser only to reveal halfway through the film that he was engaged but his fiancée died six years ago(!) and he's been helping to raise her son(!!) ever since. Dragged into watchability by Zooey Deschanel and Kathy Bates moving mountains as secondary characters.
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Fool's Gold. Barely a rom-com, this is more of an adventure movie with light rom-com elements. Anodyne, overlong, and suffers tremendously from every black character being a rapper-slash-murderer. Other than that, though, it's decent enough.
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Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Silly, schlocky, but at the end of the day pretty fun. Connor (McConaughey) is a huge asshole in a way that's not always fun to watch, but everything around that is cute, and it pulls off the Christmas Carol schtick surprisingly well considering how far it diverges from the canon.
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The Wedding Planner. We begin to get into the ones of these that I would actually describe as "good". The two leads (Jennifer Lopez and McConaughey) have real chemistry here, and the writing is absolutely on fire for the first act. The rest of the film suffers from some pacing issues, but it's still good fun. This was also one of the first rom-coms I remember seeing as kid, so it has a special place in my heart for that as well.
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How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. An actual delight. The leads are the same as in Fool's Gold (Kate Hudson and McConaughey), but they're given vastly better material here and are really able to show their chops. The supporting cast is also stellar, including Kathryn Hahn, Adam Goldberg, and Bebe Neuwirth. I'll be honest: I kinda want to watch this again just writing about it. Even if the rest of these were either mids or films I'd already seen, this alone made this project worth doing.
Even with the middling average quality of the films, hanging out with friends and shooting the shit is a lot of fun, and I may try to do something like this again... at least, if I can find another concept that grabs my fancy.
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I have made no effort to acquire any knowledge of whether this has been done before. ↩︎