Playing For Keeps

PLAYING FOR KEEPS

Director : Gabrielle Muccino

Year : 2013

Genre : Comedy

Rating : **

I am not the biggest of romantic comedies in the world, but sometimes a great filmmaker creates one that I find to be engrossing, endearing and above all, funny. However most of the time, they are vacuous comedic dead zones with instantly dislikeable characters, pointless 'love' stories and little imagination in either narrative or structure. 'Playing For Keeps' doesn't only fall into the latter but runs at full speed and belly flops straight into it's green and stagnant waters. Starring Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta Zones and Uma Thurman, 'Playing For Keeps' is a star studded, wildly misguided excuse of movie which has at it's heart, a pernicious and mean spiritedness under it's surface which I found to be in equal parts unfunny, shocking and head scratchingly boring.

Gerard Butler plays George, a former Celtic player who has moved to America to see more of his young child. He struggles to find time to be with his son and as a result, has alienated himself from both his boy and his ex played by Jessica Biel. One day after watching his son's soccer coach failing miserably at motivation and encouragement, he decides to take up the mantle, enabling him to both see his son much more and play soccer once more. Due to his good looks, he is constantly ogled by the female spectators and George begins a long string of affairs with both the single and married mums. However, can he continue his sexual exploits and still maintain respect from his son?

'Playing For Keeps' paints a world in which women are sex craved sluts and the men are aimlessly wandering about their lives trying to please them. The director of the film Gabriele Muccino is best known for his collaborations with Will Smith in 'Seven Pounds' and 'The Pursuit Of Happyness' and 'Playing For Keeps' is certainly not up to the standards set by those admittedly mediocre films. Telling a bled to death story, the film is so conventional that the plots for each individual character can be guessed with 5 minutes of their respective introductions. The acting is appalling and the dialogue is head scramblingly misjudged. Jokes revolving around infant death and child mental issues are used throughout the film and these themselves make 'Playing For Keeps' one of the worst comedies I have seen in a long while.

The cast is full of some of the best and worst actors that cinema has to offer. Gerard Butler, who has been in his fair share of bad films is hopeless as the ex soccer player and whose motivations throughout the entire film only seem to be self fulfilling and bigheaded. Jessica Biel who impressed me so much as Vera Miles in Sacha Gervasi's otherwise underwhelming 'Hitchcock' is poorly misused in 'Playing For Keeps' and her moments as George's ex wife are the best in the entire movie. Catherine Zeta Jones, who I adored in both 'Chicago' and 'Crash' is downright awful as a letterbox mouthed TV executive, whose libido is both veracious and completely stereotypical. Dennis Quaid is frustratingly bad as Jones' husband and gives  a performance of somebody acting while under the influence of a large amount of weapons grade LSD. Tarantino favourite Uma Thurman is equally bad as another soccer mum and who is only in the film to be ogled at and attract a male audience. Best known  for her brilliant role as Mia Wallace in 'Pulp Fiction', Thurman dares to re-enact the same pose as seen on the poster for that now iconic 1994 film in an unfunny and uncomfortable romance scene and this only seems to be included in the film because she is saying to the audience, ''Yeah, I'm in a rubbish film but I was in a great film once, remember?'' Interestingly both Butler and Thurman starred in 'Movie 43' which for regular viewers of my reviews will know, is not only the worst film I have seen this year, but is also the worst film I have ever seen. Maybe they have made a pact to star in the absolute worst movies of 2013. If so, they are doing a bang up job so far.

I have a real problem with films that portray women as sex obsessed, makeup wearing, money grabbing sluts. Clearly the influence of 'Sex & The City' has been felt throughout Hollywood and this is the result. It is a shame and an insult to see such talented actresses such as Jones and Thurman debase themselves for such cheap and lazy comedy and the director should be ashamed of himself. Jones won an Academy Award and Thurman was nominated for one, so they clearly know that they can act. Why then do they feel the need to portray such shallow caricatures? Some may say that Oh well, maybe it was fun for them to do something light'', but they look totally embarrassed throughout the entire duration of the movie. Come on ladies, you have proved many times you can do better than this.

Despite it's really poor acting, rubbish direction and wildly misguided 'comedy', 'Playing For Keeps' was nominated for only one Golden Raspberry award (Worst Supporting actress for Jessica Biel). This is insane as she was by far, the best thing about the entire movie. Maybe the Razzies are keeping their awards for next year when 'Movie 43' is bound to be nominated, so that both Butler and Thurman can be humiliated in one fell swoop. Kill two birds with one stone, why not? Not even managing to scrape it's small $34 million budget at the box office, 'Playing For Keeps' is an absolute car crash of a film which only seems to have been greenlit based on it's star quality. Maybe Hollywood should just stop making big ensemble comedies because based on recent evidence, they really do not work.

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