Playing for Keeps (2012)

Touches You

hyped garbage

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

An honest movie. Just know what it is about.Basically a divorce story with some weird turns but sensitive and realistic.It has the ingredients that, for those that have been there, make sense.Leaves - and this is what I like in the movies that I like - a good taste at the end. Not sad, not too happy, just pleasant.It is not unrealistic, and plays with feelings we know.Loved the Butler play, call it somehow a funny play. Jessica knows a thing or two about the issue so brings the right ingredients into its play.Not a romantic comedy, just a good movie to perhaps clean off some bitter taster some of us kept from own experiences.

Maybe I outgrown the family movies with the cute kid and the family is all you've got movies, or maybe this movie was more about the first character, George, and not for the relationship between the kid and his dad. Probably the second one. So George is a former soccer player who becomes the couch of his son's soccer team, something that makes the soccer mums bewilder. First of all, the movie has no story. I don't really know where we were heading, till the last twenty minutes. Secondly, there is no deep in the story. George just cruises over one sexual relationship after the other, screwing it up with his kid and then fixing things up by letting him drive and playing soccer in the rain. Really? And to top it all, his relationship with his ex wife is a mess up, with him being in a really bad economical situation, but still focusing on his love life.

The fact that Playing For Keeps received such poor reviews doesn't surprise me because movie critics are some of the most closed minded individuals on the planet and this movie doesn't fit into one of their predetermined little genres. It is too raunchy to be a family movie, doesn't focus on relationships or drama enough to be a romantic-comedy, doesn't involved enough soccer to be a sports movie, and doesn't have the proper type of humor to be dude movie. What it is, however, is just an all-around decent film. There's nothing great about it but it does everything pretty good. The cast is great, though they are a bit underwhelming and underutilized in the film, and they provide solid performances, albeit a bit cliché. The plot is decent enough to keep you engaged. Is it predictable? Of course it is but so are 99% of movies made nowadays so that's nothing new. All in all, I think most open-minded viewers will enjoy this as a pretty good all-around movie, nothing more, nothing less.

On DVD, a loan from my local public library.Here's the deal, a Scotsman, a former star big-time soccer player was also a bit of a "bad boy". As such he alienated his now former wife, but has moved to Virginia to be near his young son. He really realizes what a bad boy he was, but is hoping to regain the affections of his ex-wife by showing her he has become a better person. Gerard Butler is the man, George and Jessica Biel is his former wife Stacie. Their cute little son is Noah Lomax as Lewis . The situation is complicated when George learns that Stacie is planning on marrying her boyfriend of almost 3 years. The meat of the story kicks in when George is observing his son's soccer team practice and sees that the "coach" knows nothing at all about soccer, and seems otherwise worthless. So unable to resist George steps in, shows the kids a few things, and becomes their coach. This provides a bonding experience with his son, and also results in a winning soccer team.The part I didn't care for were the several single soccer moms who made aggressive attempts to get George to romance them, plus at least one married woman. It didn't seem realistic. But the saving grace was that George mostly handled them well, trying to stay true to his intention to get back together with Stacie.Overall a mostly formulaic romantic comedy with attractive actors. We enjoyed it.SPOILERS: George is struggling for money and one of the single moms helps him get an audition with ESPN as an on-air soccer news analyst. He gets the offer and is prepared to move to Connecticut. But as he drives away he recalls his son asking him to never move away again. He returns, plans to find a job locally, and Stacie breaks her engagement to the other guy.