Wayans, Rodriguez team up for rom-com
No movie genre has lost its footing as much as the rom-com. Every so often there are hints that audiences are still interested, even if the film is middling. Exhibit A: “Anyone But You,” starring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, is a hit, grossing $154 million at the box office since its release in late December.
“In theaters” still has some cache, catering to moviegoers looking for something that’s not too mentally taxing but not a bombastic blockbuster either. Netflix remains stubbornly opposed to giving most of its films a theatrical run. But with the right kind of marketing push, “Players” probably could have drawn people out to the cineplex in sizable numbers.
Instead, it will be a streaming-only affair destined to be lost in the shuffle of Netflix’s other movies. That’s a shame because “Players” is a perfectly fine — occasionally better-than-fine — romantic comedy starring well-known TV actors who know their way around this kind of material. It’s light and bouncy. There’s plenty to like here.
Gina Rodriguez plays a sports writer in New York named Mack (short for Mackenzie). Too often, women in rom-coms are plagued with self-doubt and worries that they haven’t achieved enough, personally or professionally. That’s not Mack. She’s confident, and Rodriguez has a lot of fun playing that confidence. Mack’s friends are the guys from work, including Adam (Damon Wayans Jr.).
Because they’re all single, when they go out at night, they help one another run “plays,” aka invented scenarios to make them seem more appealing to a potential hookup they just met. But when Mack sets her sights on a fellow journalist — a dashing war correspondent played with just the right amount of empty charm by Tom Ellis — she needs her friends to step up their game. She’s not looking for a one-nighter this time.
They coordinate their strategy with charts and binders filled with dossiers: Mack will “randomly” run into the guy several times until it dawns on him that they should go on a proper date.
We see the plan unfold, step
by step, like a heist movie. It’s a sharp, winking stylistic choice from screenwriter Whit Anderson (“Ozark,” “Daredevil”) and director Trish Sie (“Pitch Perfect 3”) that keeps things intriguing as the story works its way through its reliable trope: The real Mr. Right was in front of her all along.
Rodriguez is playing a journalist again (she currently stars as an obituary writer on ABC’s “Not Dead Yet”), but she’s doing something far more interesting here and that mainly comes down to delivery. The dialogue is flat, but Rodriguez gives it enough zing to make the moment work as comedy. There’s real skill in that. I wish Wayans was given more to do, but he’s a consistent presence that gives some ballast to the hijinks transpiring around him.
For decades, movie theaters provided a variety of offerings because that’s what audiences wanted. Audiences still want that, I believe, but we aren’t getting it because streaming has radically shifted what was an already destabilized business model.
As a result, certain techniques have become a lost art. Done right, a movie’s final moments can manipulate audiences into feeling more emotion that the story actually warrants. That’s particularly true for rom-coms. So what happened to endings with a crane shot of the leads heading off into the proverbial sunset while the credits roll over a song from Randy Newman or Chaka Khan? Lackluster endings have become the norm, and “Players” doesn’t escape this fate.