TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME [ 1/2]
Same old tired game. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R (profanity, sex, violence). At the Empire, the 84th and Broadway, the Harlem USA, others.
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‘TWO Can Play That Game” is the latest – and most depressingly crude and formulaic – in the recent spate of romantic comedies about black professionals.
Vivica A. Fox endlessly addresses the camera – a convention that desperately needs a rest – as Shante, a smirking, obnoxious, tirelessly self-congratulatory advertising woman who gives her fawning female friends advice on their relationships.
She’s got her own set of The Rules – and applies them rigorously to her own boyfriend Keith (Morris Chestnut), a hunky lawyer she’s maneuvering to the altar by alternatively giving and withholding affection.
Of course, Shante gets her comeuppance when her psychological game-playing drives Keith straight into the arms of a beautiful co-worker (Gabrielle Union – like Chestnut, an alumnus of “The Brothers” – who deserves better than this drivel).
You know the rest. We’ve seen this all before, and better.
If “Two Can Play That Game” were a more competently made movie, you could get worked up about the incredibly mean-spirited, misogynous tone struck throughout by writer-director Mark Brown (“How to Be a Player”), or the absolutely shameless product placements.
But the characters are so cartoonish, it’s hard to care on any level – except that it wastes such talented performers as Anthony Anderson, who mugs mercilessly as Chesnut’s pal, or rapper Bobby Brown, who is forced to don prosthetic buck teeth for a laugh in a cameo appearance.