Movie Review - ‘Playing for Keeps’

By Bob Garver

It is clear from its open­ing week­end that “Play­ing for Keeps” is one of the biggest bombs of the year, both crit­i­cally and com­mer­cially. Review data­base Rot­ten Toma­toes has it at a 2% “Fresh” rat­ing for its one pos­i­tive review vs. 59 neg­a­tive ones (and Leonard Maltin gives it only faint praise in his “pos­i­tive” review). It has also flopped at the box office, open­ing in sixth place on a week­end when the top five films have all been out for at least three weeks.

The film is almost as bad as its rep­u­ta­tion. George Dryer (Ger­ard But­ler) is a washed-up soc­cer player try­ing to win back his ex-wife (Jes­sica Biel) and son (Noah Lomax). He works his way back into their lives by agree­ing to coach the son’s soc­cer team. This new role helps him bond with his son (the film is halfway tol­er­a­ble dur­ing these scenes) and makes him an object of desire for the moms of the other kids (the film is in no way tol­er­a­ble dur­ing these scenes). The film is mostly dull and mediocre except for a few parts where it is wholly painful.

There is no rea­son to see “Play­ing for Keeps” for enjoy­ment, so you may as well see it to have fun at its expense. The time has come to revive Pop­corn Games. Eat pop­corn accord­ing to what hap­pens in the movie, assum­ing you can stay awake. Some suggestions:

–Eat a piece of pop­corn every time George is late for an activ­ity with his son.

–Eat a piece when­ever George is hes­i­tant to com­mit his time to soc­cer activ­i­ties despite the fact that he is unem­ployed and there doesn’t seem to be any­thing he’d rather be doing.

–Eat a piece and make sure your phone is off when the team’s dis­in­ter­ested orig­i­nal coach dis­tract­edly talks on his cell phone dur­ing prac­tice. The play­ers’ par­ents are watch­ing from the stands; I have a hard time believ­ing that they wouldn’t chew him out for not pay­ing attention.

–Shake your head and eat a piece when George advises the kids that they can’t score if they don’t shoot. Great, now all the kids are going to shoot and none of them are going to pass.

–Eat a piece when­ever the movie tries to build phony sus­pense in the soc­cer games despite the huge advan­tage that George’s team enjoys by hav­ing a super­star ringer for a coach.

–Eat a piece every time some­one men­tions how sexy George’s Scot­tish accent is. Eat two pieces when he him­self men­tions how sexy it is.

–Den­nis Quaid plays the crooked dad of one of the other kids on the team. Eat a piece that’s really greasy with top­ping when­ever his sleazi­ness is way over the top. In other words, eat a greasy piece every time Quaid is on screen.

–Judy Greer plays a mom who falls for George. Her dis­tin­guish­ing trait is that she cries a lot. We’re sup­posed to think that this is funny. Eat a salty piece when she cries. Not in trib­ute to her tears, but mine when I think of how she was great in “The Descen­dants” and now she’s stoop­ing to this.

–Eat a piece when­ever the women onscreen talk about Butler’s sex appeal as if they have noth­ing bet­ter to talk about.

–Throw a piece at your open mouth with­out really aim­ing when­ever a respectable actress brain­lessly throws her­self at But­ler. This includes Greer, Cather­ine Zeta-Jones as a sports­caster, and Uma Thur­man as Quaid’s wife.

–Almost for­get to eat a piece when the film makes a pass­ing ref­er­ence to the Biel character’s well-meaning fiancé (James Tup­per). The film almost for­gets him most of the time, and finally for­gets him for good at the end.

–And finally, eat a burnt piece when you imag­ine that the actors are going to “fire” some­body for cast­ing them in this mis­er­able movie.

One and a Half Stars out of Five.

“Play­ing for Keeps” is rated PG-13 for some sex­ual sit­u­a­tions, lan­guage and a brief intense image. Its run­ning time is 106 minutes.

Con­tact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

Posted by Bob Garver on Dec 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.