Gina Rodriguez in Netflix Romantic Comedy Charmer – The Hollywood Reporter

‘Players’

KC Bailey/Netflix

Mack, the cunning protagonist of the endearing new Netflix romantic comedy Players, always closes. The 33-year-old journalist has a back pocket full of plays that rarely fail. Do you want to convince the stranger at the bar that you can offer him the world? Or ambush your next door neighbor? Mack and his friends can guide you through the motions, honed over 12 years, of forcing an interaction.

The plays work well because Mack, Adam (Damon Wayans Jr.), Brannagan (Augustus Prew) and Ryan aka “Little” (Joel Courtney) are committed to the investigation. Establishing a work requires careful evaluation of the objective, the situation and the context. The works can always help you get a passionate kiss in a bar, a one night stand or even a date. Mack learns that what they can’t do is get you into a relationship.

Players, directed by Trish Sie, is the kind of romantic comedy that proudly wears the conventions of its genre. It’s not about looking for unique twists or spectacular touches. This is not about reinventing, reimagining or redoing anything about the search for love. No, it tries to win you over with the basics: attractive leads with chemistry, a bit of triangular tension, a gallery of witty friends, and a lesson crammed into a moving story.

The film begins with Mack and his friends negotiating their next play. Brannagan wants to meet a slender blonde having a drink at the bar. She seems out of her league, which means the play must have exaggerations based on honesty. Tell a story too loudly and it’s game over. The secret of the works is the process of seduction, of charming the target with your efforts. As team captain, Mack takes the lead and establishes her role as a classic rom-com heroine: a bold, hyper-independent journalist who can diagnose everyone’s problems but her own.

Her friends, most of whom work with her at the local newspaper, have their own archetypes. Adam is Mack’s friend from college, the kind of person with whom intimacy is second nature. Brannagan, an obituary reporter, enjoys the thrill of the chase so much that his friends implore him to go to therapy. Little is Brannagan’s younger brother, the accomplished sidekick and also apparently unemployed. The team has a sincere and natural relationship that is reminiscent of the dynamic between roommates in new girl (which also starred Wayans). Whit Anderson’s script isn’t heavy-handed, preferring to show the depth of each relationship through inside jokes and sometimes side-steps.

The power of the works is threatened when Mack meets Nick (Tom Ellis), an award-winning war correspondent with Egyptian cotton and matching cutlery. The couple sleeps together after a happy hour at work. When Nick brings Mack to her apartment, she falls in love with the sophistication of the place. A relationship between her and him would offer her a safe path to adulthood, making her feel secure in a time of instability (layoffs are looming at the newspaper where she works).

The transition from playboy aspirations to girlfriend comes abruptly, but the film softens once Mack recruits her friends to help her. Nick’s investigation process requires all hands on deck plus the addition of office manager Ashley (a scene-stealing Liza Koshy). They organize confrontations and encounters that push Nick to take Mack on a real date.

His plans work, but once Mack gets the guy, he realizes the relationship isn’t what he expected. Into the jokes and comedic drama of Players It’s a familiar lesson in reconciling the person you are with the person you think you should be. The development of Mack’s character is believable thanks to Rodríguez’s committed performance, who moves with ease between tears and laughter.

Players finds its heart and narrative anchor in Mack’s connection to his friends and his craft. Although the film, like most romantic comedies, takes liberties in portraying the mechanics of journalism, it relies on Mack’s writing to help us understand that Nick might not be the right man. She courts the famous scribe while recounting his small but meaningful story about baseball fans and his parents. It’s through her work on the latter that we not only come to understand Mack, but also feel compelled to continue rooting for her.