Playing for Keeps | Movie review

In what kind of suburban paradise do the soccer moms look like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Uma Thurman and Jessica Biel? The same kind, evidently, where the local peewee league is coached by a former star footballer (Gerard Butler)—a hunky Scot who’s retreated to picket-fence Virginia to win back the wife (Biel) and adorable moppet son (Noah Lomax) he ditched years earlier. Playing for Keeps, a cloying sitcom fable from Seven Pounds director Gabriele Muccino, hands this sensitive stud everything: a sleek sports car; a bevy of smoking-hot, middle-aged groupies; and—once he’s had his fun—the forgiveness of his jerked-around family. Husbands and fathers, do not try this shit at home. Such “lovable” misbehavior is best left to the professional cads.