‘Players’ scores as a commitment-phobic rom-com by making the right calls

Review by Brian Lowry, CNN

(CNN) — In romantic comedies, casual sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the commitment-phobic eventually see the error of their ways. The Netflix movie “Players” follows that basic playbook, but the fun is in getting there, thanks largely to Gina Rodriguez as the leader of a gang of friends who operate like a “Mission: Impossible”-type team for the purpose of orchestrating one-night stands.

Nobody should expect too much of a movie in this genre released on Valentine’s Day, and grading on that curve, “Players” happily punches above its weight class and exceeds expectations.

Rodriguez’s Mack and her longtime buddies (played by Damon Wayans Jr., Augustus Prew and Joel Courtney) hang out together until it’s time to leap into action and “run a play,” employing one of several tried-and-true methods they’ve developed in order to arrange random hookups.

By day, they work for a newspaper where Mack works as a sportswriter, and, in what’s definitely a sign of the times, stresses about whether the next round of layoffs might catch up with her.

Before you can say “Boomerang,” though, Mack meets dashing author Nick (“Lucifer’s” Tom Ellis), and tumbles into bed with him, only later deciding that she wants to try and have an actual relationship with him. (“Mission accomplished” would mean being offered a drawer in his apartment for her stuff, which owes a small debt to another movie from this well-worn genre, “About Last Night.”)

Although initially horrified that Mack would try to parlay their encounter into a deeper relationship after running a “play,” her buddies join in her elaborate scheme to woo Nick, and one of them, Adam (Wayans), even wonders aloud whether it’s “time to be adults” – a signal that their life of easy hookups might be coming to an end.

Of course, nothing’s ever as simple as that, and director Trish Sie (“Pitch Perfect 3” and the more recent “Sitting in Bars With Cake”) and writer Whit Anderson throw in hurdles and wrinkles. Fortunately, Rodriguez spent five seasons trying to figure out who she should be with on “Jane the Virgin,” so she’s got plenty of experience dealing with that particular conundrum.

“Players” isn’t here to carve out any new ground, merely to cover familiar territory as pleasantly as possible. And as Mack or any other sportswriter could tell you, when calling a basic play, success really boils down to execution and making the right calls.

“Players” premieres February 14 on Netflix.

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