16 December 2012, Singapore – Gerard Butler stars as a former soccer super star that moves to the town where his ex-wife lives to be close to his pre-teen son. Assumingly, his soccer career ended quite suddenly and he has nothing left to show for it. He begins to coach his son’s pee wee soccer team and attracts the attentions of all the soccer moms who fall head-over-Stepford-Wives-heels for the new stud in town.
The film is NOT horrible. As romantic comedies go, the film is probably pretty standard fare. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy realizes that she was the one he wanted all along. But that was SOP when Meg Ryan was queen of the rom-coms and even she’s moved on from Dennis Quaid.
But you do have to ask yourself, what is an A-list cast like Gerald Butler, Jessica Biel, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman, doing in a film like this? Did they lose a bet?
Watch the film if you’re nostalgic for the 90’s-style rom-com, and you’re sick of what passes for romance in film these days (ie, teen vampires, werewolves, post-apocalyptic archers); or if you have a star crush on G-Butt, cos he does take his shirt off
Doris Tian