Playing for Keeps

Just saw Playing for Keeps at a preview screening last night. Few script surprises in this stock-standard romantic comedy. If you didn't see the end coming in the first 20 minutes, you weren't paying attention. Still, a pleasant date night diversion nonetheless.

Direction and photography were above average. All the actors played their parts up to the very limits of the script. Gerard Butler was quite believable in his role as the womanizing ex- soccer star ready to be a grownup. Female members of the audience voiced their approval of him right on cue throughout the movie. His lifelong real-world enthusiasm for soccer (particularly the Celtics) shone though in quite a number of scenes.

The entourage of swooning soccer moms was also a treat to watch. Judy Greer stole the show in her role as Barb. Her mercurial mood changes were simply hilarious. Dennis Quaid's turn as a mysteriously wealthy local businessman and paranoid husband was a hoot. I can't recall many roles he's played that offered the peculiar mix of affable good guy/sinister bad guy seen here.

Not a chance you'll see this film on stage at Oscar time, but it's worth the price of admission. Recommended.

The best that can be said about Playing for Keeps is that it's a pretty inoffensive, family-friendly dramedy, with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure and a solid experienced cast going through its paces. The worst, is that from the opening minute we sense that everything about the storyline is all too familiar and true enough, everything plays out way too predictably, to provide a satisfying viewing experience.

This is one of those films where you can only just scratch your head and wonder where the supposed $55 million budget went. It must have been the actors' salaries, because the production standards, whilst adequate for a film of this nature, have all the KPI's of your average telemovie.

Gerald Butler is OK, but involves himself in too much of this very run of the mill type fare. Jessica Biel is probably the stand-out for me in amongst a host of derivative, middling characters, but rather cruelly copped an unjust Razzie nomination for her work. That probably would have been much better directed towards Dennis Quaid, who quite simply overacts in his every scene. When you see names like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman, even further relegated down the cast list, you can only shake your head and ponder once more, on how the mighty have fallen, for actors such as they were/are to have engaged themselves with this trite material.

The film is not really funny, has lame dialogue and for a "sports" movie has some rather dull sports footage. But let's not be too hard, as the sport in this case is kids soccer, which at any rate takes very much a back seat, to the family dramas and soccer mums' shennanigans, taking place away from the game.

Playing for Keeps was both a critical and commercial flop. It seems the producers dropped the ball in not even being able to attract their target audience in big numbers. Not hard to understand why. Even families need something a little more substantial than this pedestrian affair to cause them to part with their hard-earned at the box office.

I came, I sat, I watched and... well that's about it. I don't have anything bad to say about the movie, but I don't really have anything good to say about it either. Playing for keeps was a pleasant enough love story, but there really wasn't much there to hold my attention. Maybe if I was a HUGE soccer fan... but probably not.

The story was about a man, George (Gerard Butler), who screwed up his marriage and is trying to win back both his wife and son. Butler and Biel (who plays the ex-wife Stacie) both put in a good performance  but I didn't feel any chemistry between them. The only character I felt any connection with was the kid, Lewis (Noah Lomax).

Throughout the movie we kept hearing about how exciting and fun George was, but I failed to see it. Dennis Quaid does put in a fantastic performance as the reprehensible Carl.

Romantic comedy. Say it with me. Romantic comedy. Former star athlete, broken marriage, cute kid. Lots of sexual tension. I wanted to laugh at the many of what I thought were funny lines, but I wasn't feeling it from the rest of the audience. Although the movie was entertaining, there was something lacking in the script that made this all-star cast of Catherine Zeta-Jones, Uma Thurman, Dennis Quaid and Judy Greer seem more satirical in their overstated roles. Jessica Biel was the stable force playing the the former wife of the soccer great. Gerard Butler was believable as the former star now struggling to find his spot in a second career after sports.

Overall I thought it was enjoyable. The movie did not drag and had some great feel good moments. However I thought I was watching a made for TV movie. The story was very predictable as are most of your romantic comedies.

The fact that Playing For Keeps received such poor reviews doesn't surprise me because movie critics are some of the most closed minded individuals on the planet and this movie doesn't fit into one of their predetermined little genres. It is too raunchy to be a family movie, doesn't focus on relationships or drama enough to be a romantic-comedy, doesn't involved enough soccer to be a sports movie, and doesn't have the proper type of humor to be dude movie. What it is, however, is just an all-around decent film. There's nothing great about it but it does everything pretty good. The cast is great, though they are a bit underwhelming and underutilized in the film, and they provide solid performances, albeit a bit cliché. The plot is decent enough to keep you engaged. Is it predictable? Of course it is but so are 99% of movies made nowadays so that's nothing new. All in all, I think most open-minded viewers will enjoy this as a pretty good all-around movie, nothing more, nothing less.