A former sports star who's fallen on hard times starts coaching his son's soccer team as a way to get his life together. His attempts to become an adult are met with challenges from the attractive soccer moms who pursue him at every turn.
Aside from a couple of nice scenes between Butler and the young Lomax, Playing for Keeps is rigidly formulaic and shamelessly sentimental.
Watching Uma Thurman, Judy Greer and Catherine Zeta-Jones compete for such a smarmy prize is like watching Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy fight over a tricycle.
Yet another Gerard Butler vehicle that suggests the actor doesn’t so much read his scripts as pin them on a wall and throw darts at them to decide what he’s doing next, Playing for Keeps is one more low point in a disappointingly lazy career.
Rubbish.
Butler is clearly having fun but audiences will cry foul at the shameful predictability, uneven humour, awkward sentiment and, ultimately, the poorly-sketched, unsympathetic characters.
General release. Check local listings for show times.