Movie Blog: 'Playing For Keeps' Just Plain Loses

If you think total aesthetic neutrality is the mode you like best for your movie entertainment, if you prefer movies to massage your shoulders lightly instead of really getting in there to work out the knots, if dramatic conflict is just too taxing for your tender sensibilities, if casual affluence is the only acceptable backdrop for you to be able to settle into your movie night, if your most pressing real life concern is that too many people like you too much and it's hard to be universally loved, if you think broken marriages can be fixed with a junior soccer league win and a celebratory game of air hockey at the neighborhood arcade, if you think all housewives are secretly bored if not outright sexually predatory, if you believe it's alright for men to sew their wild oats but women have to choose their one and only sex partner as early as possible lest their hormones collect like so much cholesterol along the underside of their brainpan, if you think an aspiring sportscaster who at his audition for ESPN refuses to read the script on his TelePrompTer monitor would get immediately hired instead of tossed out of the building, if you think the only thing divorcees really need to get over their just-crumbled marriage is one good one night stand, if you in fact think that to give said divorcees a pity roll in the hay is an act of charity but you would clearly draw the line at letting a married woman even use your toilet, if you solve parental dilemmas with frosty chocolate milkshakes, if you revere Tom Hooper, Nancy Meyers, Taylor Hackford, Marc Forster, and Stephen Daldry, or if you don't know who any of those people are ...

If any of these precepts apply to you, then by all means enjoy Playing for Keeps.