Playing For Keeps
Direction: Gabriele Muccino
Actors: Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel
Rating:
**
Teetering between banal romance and juvenile humour, Playing For Keeps is a major disappointment from the director of The Pursuit of Happyness (2006).
Some raunch turns out to be the only unusual element in the plot about the shifting balance of power between a down-on-his luck soccer star (Butler) and his ex-wife (Biel).
He lands an assignment to coach his son’s school soccer team and the screenplay becomes a regressive male fantasy with every yummy mummy throwing themselves at the coach.
The chemistry between Butler and the cougar moms (Uma Thurman and Catherine Zeta-Jones) never quite crackles. In the midst of all this, the hunk manages to bond with his estranged wife and son.
Ho-hum! The subject of separated couples reuniting has been done time and again on the Hollywood screen. Give it a break, please.