**Warning, this post contains spoilers for the film Playing It Cool. You’ve been warned.**
So, I recently watched the Chris Evans film Playing It Cool. I went into it knowing that the reviews were terrible, and as occasionally happens, they were completely right.
Directed by Justin Reardon and written by Chris Shafer and Paul Vicknair, Playing It Cool is a rom-com about a screenwriter (Evans) who is given the job of writing a romantic comedy. The problem? He doesn’t believe in love. The twist? He falls in love with a woman he can’t have, because she already has a boyfriend. Inner conflict ensues as he struggles with the meaning of love in his own wild imagination where he pictures himself in every presented scenario of love and also deals with his heart, which is personified as a noir-tastic chain smoker. And, of course, his relationship with this woman who had drawn his affections is based on some lies and he has a group of whacky writer friend to help him out along the way.
Obviously, as romantic comedies go, it’s bursting at the seams with clichés and tropes. That’s kind of what we expect from these kinds of movies, since there is a comfort in the predictability and formulaic happy ending. I’ll be the first to admit that I have enjoyed many rom-coms, which was one of the reasons I wanted to watch Playing It Cool. (That, and I quite like the cast, which include Aubrey Plaza, Topher Grace, Anthony Mackie, and a few others.)
For all the interesting potential of this movie’s concept, though, it failed across the board. The cast was great, but it was the storytelling that broke it. So, it is with a heavy heart and a strange critical compulsion that I explain why. Basically, it seems to break down into two components:
- The Protagonist.
- The Movie’s Goal.
Di Roach 