Playing for Keeps (2012)
Certified: PG
Duration: 105 minutes
Directed by: Gabriele Muccino
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dennis Quaid, Judy Greer, Noah Lomax
KRS release

Playing for Keeps is made to measure for its intended target audience: Gerard Butler fans and fans of romantic comedies starring the same Butler.

Under Gabriele Muccino’s direction, the film focuses on Butler’s character, who is undergoing a vital personal change. While this is not the Italian director’s first Hollywood venture, it is the first film in which he seems to adopt a Hollywood sensibility.

The film has a number of clichés but Butler has honed his on-screen personality to a hilt and carries the film forward. His characterisation of a man who is trying to change and yet, at the same time, playing the fantasy object of a bevy of women, is done with a tongue-in-cheek roguish kind of charm.

George (Butler) once had the perfect life. He was a soccer sensation, was married to the beautiful Stacie (Jessica Biel) and had a son Lewis (Noah Lomax). His life was hit hard when he suffered an injury: his career was over, all the businesses he set up failed and he got divorced.

In order to salvage his relationship with his son, he returns to Virginia. Here he learns that Stacie and her boyfriend Matt (James Tupper) are getting married.

George starts coaching Lewis’s soccer team which leads him to become the focus of attention of various mothers whose children play in the team.

There is Denise (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who is single, attracted to him and can use her past as a TV broadcaster to land him a job in sports broadcasting.

Barb (Judy Greer) is a divorcee who is on him like an octopus while Patti (Uma Thurman) is married to Carl (Dennis Quaid), who is wealthy, jealous and has become fast friends with George.

Thrown into all this is his son with whom he is trying to rebuild a relationship and maybe garner another chance for himself, not just with Stacie, but to lead a decent life once again.

Muccino has made a career of depicting men who are at a point in life where they need to undergo a change, such as Will Smith’s turn in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006).

In Playing for Keeps, Muccino’s touch is most evident in the father-son relationship, not in the Hollywood-romanticised plot. However, the film still provides good popcorn entertainment that is perfect for whoever needs to switch off and escape into Hollywood glitzy land for its duration.