Movie Review ~ Players

On her Grammy-winning Album of the Year Midnights, Taylor Swift’s song Anti-Hero has a wicked hook of a chorus that begins, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” Trust me; I don’t want to start a review for the new Netflix film Players with a quote from a Swift pop-banger because the most famous woman/artist on the planet has already had enough written about her in the past week alone. However, that lyric fits so right in describing most of the characters in the film that I can’t, uh, shake it off. You’ve heard it quoted multiple times throughout the year, so by now, it’s lost a lot of its original “oomph,” but follow further down the song and get to the line “It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero,” and it conveys perfectly the feeling you get watching this strange attempt at equalizing the rom-com playing field.

Friends since college, Mack (Gina Rodriguez, Awake), Adam (Damon Wayans Jr., Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar), and Brannagan (Augustus Prew, Dear David) have developed a slick system for ending the night with the one-night stand of their choosing. These carefully orchestrated maneuvers are designed to seal the deal with a potential hook-up and have a proven success rate, so much so that each “play” has been given a specialized code name the group can drop at any given time, and everyone will know precisely how to spring into action. Mack (don’t call her Mackenzie) is the brains behind this operation and one of the best executors in any situation, quickly pivoting if an unexpected obstacle should arise.

All three work at a newspaper in various capacities and are joined in their outings by Brannagan’s younger sibling, Little (Joel Courtney, Jesus Revolution), who is learning the ins and outs of the operation.  Now into their adulthood and settling into careers looking forward to the future, for Adam, the late nights are getting shorter, and the need to bed every hot prospect isn’t as appealing. Mack and Brannagan are still in the game, bringing Little along for the ride. When Mack sets her sights on Nick (Tom Ellis, Isn’t It Romantic), an award-winning journalist who has ties to their newspaper, the group rallies to help Mack land her big fish, but genuine emotions threaten to get in the way of her scoring big.

Besides the fact that Players, written by Whit Anderson, feels an awful lot like a strange lost season of TV’s New Girl, the film has a severe problem with likability. It’s okay for there to be a random supporting character that grinds on your nerves, but nearly everyone that passes on screen in Trish Sie’s film is the type of modern-day louse we’ve been trained to avoid in media and our everyday lives. Not that you can’t make a hero out of a person who can be careless – look at a musical like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; that lead is a duplicitous, ladder-climbing schemer, but the script, direction, and performance create a character you can’t help but root for. Rodriguez is playing an anti-hero in Players surrounded by a crew of like-minded (good-looking) creeps who would rather take someone home through deception instead of, I dunno, striking up a conversation and seeing what happens.

The stakes in Players are so staggeringly low, partly because Mack and her target are mismatched from the get-go. You always know at the back of your mind how things will turn out. Anderson’s script is so transparently obvious about the ending that you spend most of the film clocking the various points when the movie could have wrapped up early had everyone seen what was standing right before them. Yet it drags on for an eternity as a once-smart woman must reduce herself to a second-class status in order to maintain a relationship filled with red flags.

I am fond of Rodriguez and have seen her resuscitate movies with scripts worse off than Players, but she’s struggling against a romantic co-star (Ellis) she has zero chemistry with and a script that won’t let her work any of her charms on until it’s too late. As good as Wayans Jr. was as best friend Adam, I would have loved to see how he would have fared in the Nick role because the necessary spark missing from the performance Ellis is giving would have upped the energy in that area. I get that older Brit Ellis may have been cast to provide the role with an authoritative air, but it’s to the detriment of his chemistry with Rodriguez. You watch the whole movie as they interact and question why either would be spending so much time with the other.

Though usually a fan of Prew, it’s a bit dismaying to see him playing a ravenous any-sexual that comes across as little more than another off-the-mark attempt at recreating Kim Cattrall’s libidinous Samantha from Sex and the City. The most exciting thing about Courtney’s character is the atrocious costumes he must wear throughout. Still, he’s at least paired with Liza Koshy (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) as a surprisingly game co-worker of his brother who loves to play the dating scheme with the gang. After making a solid impression a few weeks ago in the terrific Scrambled, SNL’s Ego Nwodim again swoops in and steals every scene she appears in as Adam’s new girlfriend. Please, someone, give Nwodim a starring role and quickly.

Last year, Sie (Pitch Perfect 3) directed a real gem, Sitting in Bars with Cake, another peek at the current dating scene and friendship that was far more successful in its presentation of both.  That film had the benefit of a likable cast with uniform chemistry. In contrast, Players struggles mightily to make us care about any of these people winding up with their happily ever after.  After all, how can you feel sorry for successful New Yorkers living in nice apartments with good jobs who think it’s better to feed someone a line instead of giving them an honest piece of themselves?  Yeah, they’re the problem. It’s them.