Rated PG-13 for language and adult situations

By Patrick Sessoms
Beacon Columnist

posted Dec 13, 2012 - 8:07:41pm

Gerard Butler keeps making it harder and harder for people to take him seriously. By the nature of romantic comedies, any actor with an accent, like Butler, is likely to find himself starring in one or two eventually, and there’s nothing wrong with that if the role is right. Playing for Keeps is not right.

I’m starting to miss the Gerard Butler we were promised in films like Gamer. Instead of living up to that potential, he seems to be stumbling from poorly written film to poorly written film, and believe me when I say Playing for Keeps is probably his worst to date. (Yes, worse than The Bounty Hunter.)

This time around, Butler is given the chance to play a former soccer player who tries to reconnect with his kid (Noah Lomax) after being mostly absent from his life. Butler is supposed to be the good guy here, meaning he gets an unreasonable pass at despicable behavior. By that I mean, par for romantic comedies, his ex-wife is getting remarried and he swoops in to sweep her off her feet in a last-ditch effort to win her back. As romantic as that sounds, what about the guy she’s marrying? He’s not a jerk. In fact, he seems like a pretty stand-up guy. But he's not the movie star, so the audience is supposed to ignore his feelings. It’s this sloppy attention to detail, this disconnect from reality, that perfectly summarizes what’s wrong with Playing for Keeps.

Scriptwriter Robbie Fox basically presents the safest possible movie he can to lure couples to theaters. But he just gives them a film that fumbles around but never gets anywhere. The script rushes from scene to scene depicting dull characters rounded out by a lead whose sole source of charm lies in his accent (a fact he even brings up at one point). It’s lazily written, focused on scenes rather than story, and therefore it’s plot is full of holes. You'll spend so much of the film scratching your head saying, “Wait a minute,” that it’s impossible to become emotionally involved with the story at all.

The worst part about Playing for Keeps, though, is that it has such an incredible cast. Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones – you couldn’t ask for a more competent collection of actors. And yet, Playing for Keeps makes every last one of them look awful. This is a good counterexample to the old argument that there are no bad roles, only bad actors. Clearly there are bad directors and writers out there as well.

Playing for Keeps is almost so bad that it’s not even worth hating. 2012 has given us a lot of terrible movies amid a few great ones, so worrying too much about one more in the dreck seems pointless. There are only a few weeks left in the year, and there are still plenty of new movies coming out that look like they’re worth the price of admission, so just forget this one. Get excited for The Hobbit instead.

Stars & Popcorn grade: 1 1/2 stars, 1 popcorn

— Born and raised in the sunshine state, Patrick grew up loving movies. He’s currently attending the University of Central Florida and is a Cinema Studies major. Along with being the president of Stars and Popcorn, he’s a player in the independent comics scene.

Sponsored by Liebe Entertainment Group, Marketplace 8. Click here to see showtimes for Playing for Keeps

Visit Stars and Popcorn at www.starsandpopcorn.com

Patrick Sessoms — Born and raised in the sunshine state, Patrick grew up loving movies. He’s currently attending the University of Central Florida and is a Cinema Studies major. Along with being the president of Stars and Popcorn, he’s a player in the independent comics scene.

— info@beaconlinenews.com

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