The Players Movie Review: Another bland, dated, misogynistic sex comedy

Players (Gli Infedeli) - an Italian ensemble comedy, revolving around the antics of sex-crazed, adulterous men - is a rehash of all the bland, misogynistic, slapstick sex comedies that have come before it (including the desi Masti and Grand Masti). The collection of vignettes, each running 5 to 20 minutes long, with recurring faces, delves into topics that have been explored ample times before, with little to zero new insights offered.There's a couple discussing their infidelities over the course of their ten year-marriage, a lusty man looking to have a quickie affair during an office offsite event, a married man with a penchant for glory holes and a married man who may or may not be gas-lighting his wife who accuses him of having an affair. As dated as these stories, is the lackluster production quality of the film, and its man-child humour. Even the characters have not progressed beyond the 90s, it seems. For example, the men are routinely shocked that women too possess a sex drive. One short story, featuring a man forcefully pursuing a woman whom the film's gaze deems as 'unattractive', is particularly painful to watch in the year 2020.Under the guise of 'cynical' and 'non-PC', the film offers you tone-deafness of various flavours - such as jabs at the disabled, and treatment of women as hags, boring/nagging wives or sex objects. It tries hard to project itself as a comedy that is laughing 'at' these men and their chauvinistic shortcomings, when it is indeed laughing 'with' them, and in fact, enabling their mistreatment of women at large - often justifying it through the lens of male biology or worse, immaturity. When it is not being sexist, the film is unjustifiably boring. The 'gags' carry the quality of jokes you were subjected to in 90s chain-emails, or are still subjected to through family WhatsApp groups. Unless, you have the stomach to endure either, you can give this one a miss.