Possibly one of the strangest "black" comedies to grace the Earth.
With the advent of better filming technology, this movie has abused the aerial technique and zoom feature to make up for the overall bizarreness of it all.
Starring Vivica A. Fox, Two Can Play That Game was about an hour and a half of mediocre social humor aimed at the black population. Fox speaks to the audience through the fourth wall, often while her costars sat beside her, gazing at her with doe eyes.
Morris Chestnut, Fox's boyfriend, is thrown into a large cage labeled "infidelity" for a majority of the movie. Fox manipulates the viewers by referring to him as a dog.
There are no spoilers for this movie. It is as predictable as a movie can get. Keith (Chestnut) is caught at a night club dancing with a coworker. Shanté (Fox) is visiting the club with friends (one including a woman who calls herself "Ghetto Fabulous"). To spite him, Shanté decides not to express any anger towards him. She demonstrates a series of mating strategies that I was unaware of existence in humans.
Watching this movie will make you understand why superficial people seem so lacking in rational argument when debating politics or religion. They are so wrapped up in this complex system of dating tactics that they don't have time to bother themselves with anything else.
One thing that greatly bothered me with this movie was the great affluence of the two main characters. The main character is, in the legal sense, single. However, she lives in this California mansion and drives a red convertible. She works at a law firm and apparently has the upperhand on many of the whites and Asians. Strangely, she doesn't mention any schooling of hers in the movie. The reality is... there are not that many minorities working these jobs like she makes the audience believe. She doesn't even seem that bright. I imagine minority figures working this position are probably not as young as she is and their spectrum of friends doesn't hit anywhere close to this Soul Food and Def Jam's How To Be A Player kind of cast.
Scenes in the movie will leave you baffled. Two things I noticed:
1. A scene where Shanté and her friends are Dietre's house, they are apparently discussing their tactics on bothering men. Shanté reveals that she went over to Keith's house, passionately kissed him on the couch and left him with a raging hard-on. The girls giggle and one of them starts talking about how "we all like dick!" to which they begin to discuss a man they all know who is very well-endowed. "Mr. Big Stuff" starts playing in the background, fading its way in. And all the girls begin to dance. But when you think about it, they're not really dancing to that music. No one turned that on. It was just part of the background music.
2. Shanté is at a big business party. She notices Keith is there with a coworker, so she goes out to her car and flattens her back tire. After several men stop and offer help, she gets an attractive man dressed up in a suit to stop and help. Afterwards, she invites him into the party for a drink. Regardless of the fact that he was driving somewhere when he stopped.. and was wearing a suit, he still stayed with her at the party for a very long time. Surely he was going somewhere important.
This movie is not worth $7.50. It's probably not even worth $5 for an afternoon ticket. The audience in the theater I watched it in? About 15 people were there. Talk about crazy.