The Right Casting for The Field?

Now we know that Jessica Biel will be the one playing the role of Gerard Butler's ex-wife in the soon to be filming Playing the Field.  This casting choice makes more sense to me, although perhaps not as quirky as Uma Thurman, who was rumored to be playing that role on an Italian website.

Biel looks great on screen and if she plays it a little less for laughs and more of the straight role as the wife, I think it will be a good match.   Hopefully she and Butler have a quiet chemistry and not some more of the snarking between them that we saw in The Ugly Truth or The Bounty Hunter.  It may have served for those two movies (and not very well for the latter), but it gets tiring and one dimensional as a staple for Butler's comedic characters.  I think he has more in him.  I hope I'm right.

My advice to him... Be a sweet, but charming rascal.  It will play so much better.  Remember Beatty in Shampoo?  His character could get away with so much (and be forgiven) because he was sweet and charming (if flawed) and the women couldn't get enough of that then...and perhaps still not now.  In the age of  the Internet, we already get saturated with nastiness and snark and,  since women seem to be having more clout at the box office this year,  don't go for too much cutesy (as in smart aleck) either.   Everybody does that! A little sweetness, romance, and intelligent (even if angry)  dialogue between the two exes and the other characters, might really make this one worth watching.

Having said that,  I think the juicy role will belong to Uma as the soccer mom.  She will get to camp it up in the scenes with Butler and she is good at that.   I hope the rumors of Paltrow as another soccer mom are true and  that she signs on to the project (even as in a cameo)   Like her or not (I do),  she can act and her name will give the movie a little more weight.

I like the cast they have chosen, so far.  I hope the story and a steady and imaginative hand from the director, Gabriele Muccino, as well as some natural warmth and subtlety from Butler,  will make it the winner he needs as a follow up to the well reviewed Coriolanus and the still unknown quantity of Machine Gun Preacher.

I would like to see this muse prove some of the critics wrong.   I'm sure he would too.

As always, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.



Songs out of tune, the words always a little wrong...Canzoni Stonate