Hey ref, this is miles offside
In the romantic comedy Playing for Keeps, Gerard Butler is George Dryer, a former soccer star from Scotland who has followed his exwife Stacie (Jessica Biel) to Virginia so he can be near their frecklefaced son Lewis (Noah Lomax).
Trying for a job as a sportscaster, he marks time by coaching the boy’s soccer team and immediately excites the attentions of the soccer moms — including Judi Greer, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Uma Thurman — who inundate him with offers of easy, tawdry and (in some cases) irresistible sex, while he strives mightily to hold them off so he can be the father his boy always needed.
It’s a story that raises many questions, including why George would want to raise a son in a town that makes Peyton Place look like Salt Lake City: it’s the beltway unbuckled. George is a familiar character from the movies — the repentant but alluringly mischievous former husband — but in this case he actually seems to have a sense of responsibility. It’s just that, what are you going to do when Thurman appears in your bed in her undies?
In fact, George tosses her out, a discredit to incorrigible ex-husbands everywhere. He’s as confused as we are. Playing For Keeps has been written (by I Married An Axe Murderer’s Robbie Fox) and directed (by Pursuit of Happyness’s Gabriele Muccino) as a mushy-headed vehicle for what are supposed to be a lot of high-voltage star turns. Nothing much makes sense, but look at all the celebrities.
This would be better if they had anything interesting, or appropriate, to do. Butler — the he-man hero in a series of action films — tries hard for the unshorn charm of the down-and-out former athlete, but he has a streak of malevolent toughness that makes him hard to buy as a squishy reformed hellraiser.
“You’re like a ticking time bomb with a charming accent,” Stacie tells him, which nails the feeling of upcoming mayhem, although it never arrives.
Among the lusty housewives, Greer and Thurman are mostly embarrassing as desperate women who sneak into his bed, but ZetaJones maintains her dignity as a hot mom who at least has a twinkle — it must be irony — in her eyes.
Also along for the fun is Dennis Quaid as Carl, a local businessman who cheats on his wife (Thurman) and bribes George to let his kid play goal. Quaid looks uncomfortable in a role of murky motivations that wander merrily along, disconnected to anything like rational human behaviour.
The most intriguing character, however, is one who appears way down in the credits. James Tupper, born in Dartmouth, N.S., is Matt, Stacie’s new beau and the man who is about to marry her, thus ruining George’s chances of redemption and happiness.
Playing For Keeps reaches its climax in a championship soccer game that we’re supposed to care about as the apotheosis of the devotion of George and Lewis. It’s the movie’s idea of fatherhood — being around for the big goal in a world where you could just as easily be canoodling with Catherine Zeta-Jones. I wonder if Matt knows she’s available.