The best that can be said about Playing for Keeps is that it's a pretty inoffensive, family-friendly dramedy, with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure and a solid experienced cast going through its paces. The worst, is that from the opening minute we sense that everything about the storyline is all too familiar and true enough, everything plays out way too predictably, to provide a satisfying viewing experience.
This is one of those films where you can only just scratch your head and wonder where the supposed $55 million budget went. It must have been the actors' salaries, because the production standards, whilst adequate for a film of this nature, have all the KPI's of your average telemovie.
Gerald Butler is OK, but involves himself in too much of this very run of the mill type fare. Jessica Biel is probably the stand-out for me in amongst a host of derivative, middling characters, but rather cruelly copped an unjust Razzie nomination for her work. That probably would have been much better directed towards Dennis Quaid, who quite simply overacts in his every scene. When you see names like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman, even further relegated down the cast list, you can only shake your head and ponder once more, on how the mighty have fallen, for actors such as they were/are to have engaged themselves with this trite material.
The film is not really funny, has lame dialogue and for a "sports" movie has some rather dull sports footage. But let's not be too hard, as the sport in this case is kids soccer, which at any rate takes very much a back seat, to the family dramas and soccer mums' shennanigans, taking place away from the game.
Playing for Keeps was both a critical and commercial flop. It seems the producers dropped the ball in not even being able to attract their target audience in big numbers. Not hard to understand why. Even families need something a little more substantial than this pedestrian affair to cause them to part with their hard-earned at the box office.
