Thu 15 Feb 2024
ROLE PLAY. Amazon MGM Studios via Prime Video; 12 January 2024. Kaley Cuoco (Emma Brackett), David Oyelowo (Dave Brackett), Bill Nighy, Connie Nielsen. Directed by Thomas Vincent, written by Seth Owen.
The Bracketts, Emma and David, are an ordinary mixed-race couple, with a couple of kids, but with a difference. He’s an ordinary husband, but she (Kelly Cuoco, previously of The Big Bang Theory) has a secret. She travels a lot, but she is not taking ordinary (boring) business trips, which is what she tells her husband. No, how she adds to the family’s mortgage account is by being a hitwoman. An assassin for hire.
So she has a lot of things on her mind. Not only her job, but making sure her husband has no clue what her job is. It is no surprise that when she comes home from one of her “business” trips, she has committed the ultimate sin. She has forgotten their anniversary. Dave is forgiving, but they decide as a couple that their marriage needs some spicing up.
The idea they come up with to accomplish this is the following plan. They will travel to New York, register separately under different names, planning to meet “accidentally” in the hotel bar, and spent an “illicit” night together.
This is what is called role play. You may have indulged in it yourself.
Things go awry quickly. David is late in arriving, and while Emma is waiting for him in a bar, an elderly gentleman (Bill Nighy) starts chatting her up. In an ordinary way, but gradually with more and more of an edge. Menacing, even. Emma senses something is up, and before the night is over, the elderly gentleman is dead.
This is maybe 20 to 30 minutes into the movie, no more than that, and from that moment on, the movie has nowhere in particular to go. Billed as an action comedy, it is in fact neither. The two leads have no particular chemistry together, and try as hard as I could, I could not convince myself that Kelly Cuoco (of The Big Bang Theory) is at all convincing as a hit woman for hire. The end result is amusing at best, but far from essential, even for fans of either of the two leading players.
Your opinion, of course, may differ.
February 15th, 2024 at 9:40 pm
With Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, I would go for it. Or with Gable and Loy.
February 15th, 2024 at 10:36 pm
Cary Grant and Myrna Loy? I would watch that!
February 15th, 2024 at 11:10 pm
Wife and I watched this last week. Took it for what it is, mildly entertaining, completely unbelievable , but still enjoyable.
February 16th, 2024 at 1:57 am
By some strange coincidence, I just saw Connie Nielsen, who plays Kelly Cuoco’s mentor in this one, in another movie called BASIC, in which she plays an army investigator assigned to a case of murder and more on a training mission in Central America during a hurricane. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are the two leading stars, but she’s also extremely good in it.
February 16th, 2024 at 7:58 am
This is the second very similar negative review of this I’ve read (George Kelley, generally an easy grader, had the other). Cuocco was also the star of the overrated (IMHO) The Flight Attendant, but this sounds a lot worse.
THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT with Geena Davis (and Mr. Samuel L. Jackson) is the one to see.
February 16th, 2024 at 12:46 pm
Yes, George beat me to watching this by several weeks. Here’s a link to his review:
http://georgekelley.org/role-play-amazon-prime-video/
He gave it a “C” but I think he was a whole lot harder on it than I was.
February 16th, 2024 at 9:09 pm
A miss, better credits than results.
February 17th, 2024 at 4:18 pm
Connie Nielsen tends to elevate her projects. And THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT has its silliness, but it moves and mostly works very well. As with Bill Crider, it and CUTTHROAT ISLAND pleased me much more than they did the first round of reviewers.