Review of Playing for Keeps (2012) by Thomas W — 22 Aug 2013

I watched this movie and didn't hate it while it was on ... and that is perhaps the best thing I can say about Playing for Keeps, a dramedy starring Gerard Butler (Dracula 2000) as a retired soccer star who reluctantly takes on the role of head coach for his son's soccer team as a way of spending more time with his son and bonding with him.

I cannot tell one much more about the movie as it is a forgettable film and there is little here to recommend. Butler plays George, a divorced man living it up as a playboy in the smallish town he has moved to in order to be closer to his son.

When his financial situation gets tough, he takes on the additional job/role of coach and gets to flirt with all of his players' mothers (score!). The film is formulaic and predictable although (also) never disastrously awful.

George's ex-wife, Stacie (Jessica Biel - The Illusionist), is still friendly towards her ex but she begins to grow somewhat jealous of the attention he wins from the other ladies played by Judy Greer (13 Going on 30), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Entrapment) and Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction).

Zeta-Jones works for a television station and George dreams of being an on-air sports anchor/pundit while Thurman is a rich housewife with an opportunistic but jealous husband played by Dennis Quaid (Frequency).

Guess where these relationships go? I'd give you two guesses but you'd only need one. One could read the box cover of the movie and know what'll happen. This is another film in which the central couple -- exes -- flirt and realize that their relationship wasn't as bad as they had believed it to be.

This is also yet another film in which a genuinely nice guy -- not George, but Stacie's fiancé Matt (James Tupper - Me and Orson Welles) -- is horribly wronged but audiences don't seem to mind.

This says a lot, does it not?