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Prepare for liftoff

February 17, 2011

By Staff Reporter

In fact, “People” magazine’s newest “Sexiest Man Alive” is quick to defend Tripp, describing him as a decent, likable guy who knows how good he has it and is reluctant to forego home-cooked meals and free laundry service for privacy and independence.
Of course, there is another side to the story in this new comedy. No matter how much Tripp’s parents (played by Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw) may love their boy, they are also eager for him to leave the nest, prompting them to hire a beautiful “professional motivator” (Sarah Jessica Parker) to nudge him along the road to adulthood.
“It was very important to me that we didn’t set up the whole reason that the parents want him out of the house is because they don’t like him there or because he’s a pain in the butt or because he’s a slacker or because he doesn’t contribute,” the 36-year-old, Irish-American actor recently explained to reporters in New York.
“It’s very important that he has a great relationship with his parents and is a good son,” the Texas native added. “It’s very important that he has a great relationship with his two friends and he’s a great friend to them. He’s a good dude. But if you asked him, (he’d say:’) ‘Yeah, I’m at home. Rent’s paid, mom cooks, clothes are folded. Why screw this deal up?’ Very simply, that makes sense.”
Although McConaughey doesn’t have any first-hand experience with this way of life, he says he can see why so many people — particularly men — stay home until they are much older these days, particularly if they are limited by economics or are keeping with cultural tradition.
“I don’t think it’s right or wrong,” he remarked. “It’s different for different people. Two weeks out of high school, I was on a plane to Australia for a year, so I was ready to go off and go test myself and put myself in an unknown place and work it out. Some economics, and some like this guy.”
A far cry from Dirk Pitt, the globe-trotting adventurer he played in last year’s “Sahara,” Tripp is still the kind of “man’s man” part McConaughey says his fans — both male and female — like to see him play.

The date-movie trap
“The romantic comedies I don’t like, I’ll go in and go: ‘Aw, geez, man, you completely got castrated in the thing, you know?'” he noted. “And a lot of these romantic comedies are set up to be some sort of war of the sexes; that’s the fun of it. And if you do that, I believe it needs to be balanced and a lot of them aren’t, where the man is sort of the foil, who’s kind of pulled left, pulled right, and pushed in a direction and sent on his way by the girl. I think it’s funnier and more true if you can go in, be a guy’s guy, that you take everything literally and completely seriously and everything’s hard-core ‘walk the line,’ but give the guy some (guts,) you know? Then it’s funnier to me. It doesn’t alienate anyone that way.”
An actor as comfortable in movies such as “The Wedding Planner” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” as he is in dramas like “A Time to Kill” and “Amistad,” McConaughey says he was drawn to this funny love story because the character is actually a lot more complex than he first appears.
“One of the reasons he stays at home was because he had a fianc

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