Players review

Players is a rom com that suffers from a cast frequently operating out of position, a lousy scripted gameplan and direction that seems to shift genres every 10 minutes. Maybe there’s a winning formula buried somewhere deep in this largely joyless endeavor, but it’s a rom com with no shot at championship glory.

Gina Rodriguez stars as Mack, a sportswriter who takes her love of sports too far. She schemes up plays that she and her crew — Adam (Damon Wayans Jr., The Harder They Fall), Brannagan (Augustus Prew) and his little brother, Little (Joel Courtney, The Kissing Booth) — can run for one-night stands. The scheming hardly seems necessary since this crew isn’t a pack of trolls, but sure, let’s play along.

Director Trish Sie (Pitch Perfect 3) shows the crew’s prowess in running these romance scams with little trouble. Mack’s ease in hooking up with a neighbor in her apartment building is impressive if overly calculating. Again, only in rom coms do attractive women have to put in so much work to land a dude. It’s immediately clear that Adam is crushing hard on Mack, which clearly won’t cause any problems.

Screenwriter Whit Anderson, the executive story editor on the fantastic season 2 of Daredevil, is less steady penning the adventures of a sportswriter and her wacky friends. Pacing is an obvious problematic area.

Not long after Mack’s apartment fling, she makes the whiplash-inducing decision that she’s ready for a stable relationship. Just like the one her folks had. That feels a bit sudden after watching all of the work Mack put in for a hit it and quit it hookup just a few moments ago.

What sparked this turnaround? That would be Nick (Tom Ellis, Lucifer), the dreamy Pulitzer winning writer in town visiting Mack’s editor. Naturally, Mack starts drawing from her extensive playbook on how to sucker Nick into a long-term relationship with her by concocting overly elaborate “random” meet-ups.

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Besides Adam, Mack’s bench isn’t really up to the task. It felt like Anderson thought Brannagan and Little were more amusing than he was capable of writing them. Brannagan is the too wild and over the top friend who feels written to as the wild & crazy friend who has no problem talking about various bodily fluids, bowel movements and other inappropriate in public topics. Anderson probably could have just toned Brannagan down by adding some of Little’s traits making for a more fully realized character.

The less is more strategy also applies to the overall plot. The whole running plays to land a relationship feels more of a hindrance for Players than a streamlined approach of a woman tired of playing games. Instead of being her authentic self, she hides her unique edges to make her dream guy fall for her. Limit the cast to Mack, Adam, Nick and Brannagan in small doses and there’s a simpler rom com ready to be enjoyed.

Nick proves a harder target to woo since Mack wants a long-term deal. She recruits co-worker Ashley (Liza Koshy, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) for some additional help. After some more elaborate planning, Mack gets the guy, but finds happiness far more elusive.

To throw things off somewhat, Anderson adds in a girlfriend (Ego Nwodim) for Adam, continuing the notion that Players is just throwing any rom com plot premise up and hoping something lands.

Bizarrely, Anderson tries to make the great logical stretch to suggest Nick was “rewriting” Mack as if he was the bad guy. In reality, Mack built a foundation of lies and got upset when Nick interjected some truth in the mix. It was tough trying to play along with the notion that Mack was the victim.

Sie also doesn’t seem fully settled on the film she wants to deliver with Players. Is it a frat-boy comedy with crass, vulgar humor? A strategic battle of the sexes romance? Or a predictable, but enjoyable basic rom com? Sometimes simple is better and that’s the only play that needed to be run with Players.

Rating: 3 out of 10

Photo Credit: Netflix