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Review: Play the Game

A slow, painful, embarrassing death of dignity.
By SHAULA CLARK  |  August 26, 2009
0.0 0.0 Stars

 

This is the kind of movie you stagger out of in a stunned trance. Actually, it's the kind of movie that must've been conceived and financed in a stunned trance as well. Smug young stud David (Billy Campbell) drops ludicrous dating tips on widowed Grandpa Joe (Andy Griffith!).

Yet David's mack-daddy powers run out when he meets Julie (Marla Sokoloff). Writer/director Marc Fienberg must think of old people as childish Martians: in his world, they call movies "talkies," don tracksuits to sputter words like "dope" and "tight," and have never heard of Viagra. And you have not known pain till you've been forced to sit through the great Andy Griffith making a puffy "O" face during fellatio.

Early on, a depressed Gramps threatens to slit his wrists: "I figure if I've got to go, it should be a big bloody mess." This is, instead, a slow, painful, embarrassing death of dignity.

  Topics: Reviews , Andy Griffith, Andy Griffith
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ARTICLES BY SHAULA CLARK
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  •   INTERVIEW: PAULA DEEN  |  August 26, 2009
    "I'm just looking so forward to coming up there. And having lobster. In some butter. Did I mention I like butter?"
  •   REVIEW: PLAY THE GAME  |  August 26, 2009
    This is the kind of movie you stagger out of in a stunned trance.
  •   REVIEW: THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD  |  August 19, 2009
    Cash for clunkers? Not completely.
  •   REVIEW: THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE  |  August 19, 2009
    Long a staple of sci-fi, time travel makes its chick-flick debut in Robert Schwentke's adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's novel.
  •   REVIEW: BANDSLAM  |  August 12, 2009
    This Todd Graff film suggests a year's worth of Degrassi plots squished into one overcomplicated bouillon cube.

 See all articles by: SHAULA CLARK

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