Veering between syrupy sweet and awkwardly dirty, Play the Game is a woefully scoreless exercise.
Comment
08/28/09
Play the Game (2009)
28
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:8
Rotten:21
Average Rating:4.3/10
Consensus: Andy Griffith is his usually likable self, but he's stranded in a middling comedy that's surprisingly tasteless and poorly crafted.
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Writer/Director Marc Fienberg’s PLAY THE GAME is an original comedy with surprising and clever twists about a young ladies' man, David, who teaches his dating tricks to his lonely, widowed... [More]
Starring: Andy Griffith, Paul Campbell, Liz Sheridan, Doris Roberts
Director: Marc Fienberg
Reviews for Play the Game
Top CriticSmart screenplay, good directing. Except for Griffith, casting is wrong.
08/28/09
The good news is that the seemingly perennial TV fixture is still funny and sharp and folksy. The bad news is that he lost the bet, or whatever it was that got him into Marc Fienberg's smarmy, lackluster comedy.
08/28/09
Griffith improvises an orgasm that seems to last as long as the entire eight-year run of The Andy Griffith Show.
08/28/09
It’s The Andy Griffith Show meets Seinfeld in the sack in Play the Game, which shows Andy is not too old to star in a sex comedy, I guess.
08/27/09
Top CriticPlay the Game has all kinds of good intentions, but the comedy is too broad and the pacing is clumsy. Take away the dirty parts, and this is the type of thing you can get for free on the Hallmark Channel every day.
08/28/09
The comedy's broad perfs, predictable story beats and pro but characterless packaging have a smallscreen feel.
08/20/09
Top CriticThis Lifetime-ready comedy is hardly provocative -- let alone perceptive, funny, or fresh.
08/25/09
While Fienberg's direction is no great shakes, the film showcases its veteran cast.
08/28/09
one of those endearingly cute, funny movies you'll see on cable and wonder why studios don't put their marketing machine behind this kind of film instead of the typical garbage we get passed off on us as summer 'entertainment.'
08/28/09
I never contemplated what Andy Griffith's face would look like during orgasm, and I curse this atrocious and shoddy romantic comedy for making Griffith do it and making anyone watch it.
11/13/09
Opie, I don't think we're in Mayberry any more.
08/27/09
Play the Game takes an interminable hour to get going. Every scene, every line reading, plays slow. There's no snap to it.
04/01/09
Did you ever wonder what face Andy Griffith makes when he's having an intimate moment with a lady friend? Me neither. Yet that's one of many "delights" foisted on us during writer-director Marc Fienberg's feature-length debut comedy.
08/28/09
Heartwarming, clever and very, very funny. It's a genuinely charming, uplifting and crowd-pleasing gem that must be seen by generations, young and old.
08/28/09
The scene in which Alzheimer's is played as a dating dealbreaker is as stunningly tasteless as Fienberg's zooming-in on Joe's face when he receives his first blowjob.
08/28/09
Truly an oddball motion picture, Game is one part smutty romp, one part romantic comedy, with the entertainment value of the feature resting solely in how uncomfortably blunt it can get.
04/02/09
A film in which comedic maturity is measured in jokes about hemorrhoids, constipation, and erectile dysfunction.
08/27/09
Hearing Griffith say, 'David, grandpa's horny,' is not something anyone should have to experience.
08/27/09
Surely, there is a way of expressing the joy of sex without the potty-mouthed dialogue that desecrates the persona of a television and movie icon.
08/27/09
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