Dec. 12, 2012 - Issue #895-Japandroids
Playing For Keeps
Butler always plays for keeps
George Dryer (Butler) is a washed-up ex-soccer pro coaching his young son's soccer team, bedding or nearly bedding various vapid moms (Judy Greer, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Uma Thurman) of the players and trying to get back onside with his ex-wife (Jessica Biel, who tries to rise above but was apparently contractually obligated to gaze hopefully or cry in every scene). An own-goal shambles of bland characterization, comic shtick, exes-still-in-love clichés and lazy implausibilities, this is like a bad Coen brothers comedy played straight. It does offer an occasionally delinquent notion of parenting—George teaches good ol' Virginian kids to say "wanker" and lets his son steer the Berlusconi-mobile on the open road. Otherwise, Playing For Keeps plays down to the ugliest American stereotype of soccer—dull to the point of brain-death.
vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
Privacy Policy:
Vue respects your privacy. We will not forward your personal information to any other organization except as required by law, and will use your e-mail address only to respond to your comments. We reserve the right to edit and remove comments for length, clarity and/or if they are illegal or inappropriate. Your email address is never shown to visitors to vueweekly.com. Read the whole policy at: http://vueweekly.com/privacy
Comments policy
Comments go online directly without first being seen or reviewed by editors at Vue. Don't personally attack people, don't be defamatory, don't be spam-atory, don't hawk your band, don't pretend to be someone else, be clear, be on topic, be nice. Read our extended comments policy here. »
We use Disqus for our comments system. What's that all about?
We found that managing the comment community at Vue was easier to do with a system like Disqus. If this isn't straightforward to you, get help here.