Every year around Valentine’s Day, a slew of rom-coms are released in theatres and streaming to make for the perfect date night for you and your Valentine. This year, Netflix’s Players is on the list, and I’d say this one makes for a pretty good date night with a fun story and lots of comedy, even if it is a tad bit predictable.
Players takes something similar to the How I Met Your Mother “Playbook” and adds some feminine energy to the mix. Mack (Gina Rodriguez) lives in a bit of a “man’s world” as a sports writer in New York. She is the only woman in her friend group and has become an integral part of the circle, especially when it comes to picking up people at the bar.
She helps her pals play out elaborate schemes with the goal of a one-night stand. It goes both ways; the guys are happy to help her out, too, but everything takes a turn when Mack meets Nick (Tom Ellis) and wants to play for keeps. From here, Players turns into the Ocean’s 11 of rom-coms, and honestly, I’m here for it.
Written by Whit Anderson (Daredevil, Ozark) and directed by Trish Sie (Pitch Perfect 3, Step Up All In), Players is a romantic comedy made by women about a woman for women. I love that in film and movies in 2024, we are seeing more of women who just want to have some fun and men who aren’t so full of toxic masculinity becoming mainstream.
“Players is a romantic comedy made by women about a woman for women.”
One of Mack’s friends is clearly bisexual (Augustus Prew), and the other guys don’t think twice when helping him run a play. Not that I’m condoning pretending to be someone else to sleep with someone, but it’s nice to see a woman in charge of her sexuality in a film, and Players does this well.
The cast in Players is an eclectic mix that I didn’t think would work as well as it did. Gina Rodriguez (Mack), Augustus Prew (Brannagan), Joel Courtney (Little), Damon Wayans Jr. (Adam) and eventually Liza Koshy (Ashley) make up the core friend group, with Tom Ellis as Nick, the love interest. Even Bebe Neuwirth plays Mack’s boss, though I can’t find her credited anywhere.
Prew and Little play brothers and Koshy plays a flighty co-worker who is just happy to be included. Though these three are the supporting cast, the majority of the laughs come from them. Rodriguez manages a balance of sexy, funny and confident but becomes smaller and shallow in the presence of Nick, despite what she displays on the outside. It’s in her performance, and Anderson’s writing where you start to sense something isn’t all it could be.
The one flaw that Players suffers from is the predictability of the standard rom-com. Unfortunately, not far into the movie, I was able to predict where our friends would end up, even though they tried to throw a few curveballs at us. I fell victim to swooning after Tom Ellis because he was “a grown-up”—and Tom Ellis, obviously—but what is on the surface can be deceiving.
“The one flaw that Players suffers from is the predictability of the standard rom-com.”
I deeply loved Ellis in Lucifer, as he was the perfect combination of good and evil, but in Players he really embraced a lack of compassion and made me go from loving him to hating him really quickly, which good actors are supposed to do, even though it bums me out!
What I haven’t talked a lot about yet is Adam. Though funny as always, making us laugh wasn’t exactly Damon Wayans Jr.’s main role in Players. We get to see Adam sort of outgrow the “player” lifestyle. We see his relationships and his priorities change, and he becomes the voice of reason.
Adam is a much more mature character than I’m used to from the actor I know from Happy Endings and New Girl. There is even a change in the way he smiles toward the end of Players that feels a lot more meaningful than when he is laughing with his pals at the bar. It’s the change you want to see in male leads, the polar opposite of our dreamy Nick and Wayans Jr. pulled me over to his side flawlessly.
Unfortunately, a lot of people downplay rom-coms and don’t think they qualify as quality filmmaking, and I hate to see viewers and critics alike downplaying them simply because of their genre. Laughter has a place in film, too. Players may still fall into the Valentine’s Day rom-com category, but with women leading the charge, the team behind the movie brought a progressive comedy to life that won’t alienate those who may not adore the genre. Though the plot was a tad predictable, Players was still a good time for someone who wants to laugh a little this February 14th.
