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STUDIO: New Line Home Entertainment
MSRP: $19.98
RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Director’s commentary
• Previews
The Pitch
We’ve got a few unused script pages leftover from Def Jam’s How to be a Player. Let’s get three aging but still hot actresses together, pull Bill Billamy off the street and see what the hell we can cobble together.
The Humans
Vivica A. Fox, Bill Bellamy, Carmen Electra and Stacey Dash
Yeah, my nipples do the same thing anytime I hear Michael Jai White’s name.
The Nutshell
Three longtime lady friends are tired of being played by the men in their lives. They decide to prove they can be just as morally bankrupt as men and have a friendly little wager. They’ll all try to seduce the next man that walks in the door and videotape their conquests. The winner gets, uh, something that’s never really discussed, but self-respect can probably be ruled out of the prize pool.
Unbeknownst to them, the rube in the wager overheard the plan being formulated and rigged the game so that he would be the next man in the door. He proceeds to cash in on his free sex from the friends and sabotages their videotaping efforts. Alas, in a stunning plot twist he ends up falling in love with the third friend and she feels the same about him. Will they be able to confess the truth to each other and end up happily ever after?
"But it wasn’t until Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise that the character of Lamar really came into his own."
The Lowdown
Getting Played is what happens when you try to stretch a sitcom plot into a feature length film. It’s much harder than it looks. The plot it paper thin and the ending is never in question, so you’ve got to find ways to pad the thing out to 90 minutes. This film tries its damndest to do so and still only ends up at 85 minutes. Some of the transparent attempts to stretch the banality out longer include a five minute Bill Bellamy striptease sequence that gives the viewer a good idea of what hell is like. There’s also the extended Def Jam comedy routine that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. The filmmakers had time to kill and a comedian running through their entire set helped in that regard.
This leaves the film with only one redeeming factor – the physical attractiveness of the three female leads. Unfortunately, this is a PG-13 film so the filmmakers can’t exploit that asset to the fullest. ‘Tis a shame. Save yourself the pain of stilted sitcom dialogue and situations. Pick up a copy of Playboy if you simply must see Carmen Electra or Stacey Dash in the raw. That way you don’t have to stare at Bill Bellamy’s grinning mug the entire time.
It’s like Sesame Street for the trailerpark set.
The Package
The disc includes a director’s commentary, but the real answer is WHY does it include a director’s commentary? You can learn things by listening to a film historian’s commentary track on a classic film. You can be entertained by listening to a commentary track by two lifelong friends cracking wise about the films they made together. You can get the ins and outs of movie production by listening to specific crew member commentary tracks.
What the hell can you learn by listening to the commentary track for Getting Played? How to successfully make mediocre direct-to-video crap? No thanks. When someone takes a giant crap, you don’t feel it necessary to go and ask them about the digestive process that went into creating the crap, unless that’s your freaky fetish. Including a director’s commentary for a film like this is almost as useless a feature as scene selection. No one in their right mind will ever listen to it in its entirety and may God have pity on their souls if they do.