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The Game Plan Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG (for some mild thematic elements) Genre: Comedy, Family Theater release: September 28, 2007 by Walt Disney Pictures Directed by: Andy Fickman Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes Cast: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (Joe Kingman), Madison Pettis (Peyton Kelly), Kyra Sedgwick (Stella Peck), Roselyn Sanchez (Monique Vasquez), Morris Chestnut (Travis Sanders), Kate Nauta (Tatianna) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

The best thing that can be said for The Game Plan is that it shows what a good sport Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is. It has always been a tad difficult to take the former pro wrestler seriously, even when he isn't trying to be all that funny; I can recall how the audience tittered when the ancient warrior he played in The Mummy Returns looked back and scowled after a military defeat. But to his credit, Johnson is well in touch with his humorous side, and so, after playing a minor comic role or two (remember the gay bodyguard who wanted to be a singer in Be Cool?), he has now taken the lead role in an out-and-out comedy—and a children's comedy, at that.

He hasn't stretched his onscreen persona too much, though. In his last film, the real-life drama Gridiron Gang, he played a football coach with a message. This time, he plays a vain, selfish, celebrity football quarterback whose life undergoes some drastic changes when the daughter he never knew he had turns up on his doorstep—and this time, it's the film as a whole that relays the obvious messages.

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as Joe, Madison Pettis as Peyton

And yes, those messages are relayed pretty obviously. Joe Kingman, the Elvis-loving quarterback played by Johnson, is a very wealthy, famous and self-centered athlete whose apartment is filled with expensive furniture and giant images of his face; whenever his guests threaten to make a mess, Joe tends to chastise them by saying, "That's a $10,000 bed!" or "That's a $40,000 couch!" We get it, we get it: When we first meet Joe, everything in his life revolves around money and material possessions—but, of course, we suspect he will learn that there is more to life than this.

Joe has a similarly shallow and self-centered attitude toward women—though here the film, mindful of its grade-school audience, treads carefully. Joe has only one girlfriend that we see, a sultry Russian named Tatianna (Kate Nauta), but when he needs to give her a gift, he steps inside a giant closet filled with Chanel bags. Apparently, Joe gets around quite a bit—and he openly chides one of his married teammates, Travis Sanders (Morris Chestnut), for leaving a party early to be home with his wife and kids. "Get a life!" says Joe. "You call this life?" Travis replies.

Peyton introduces her dad to a world totally unfamiliar to him

And then the fateful day comes—the day when a seven-year-old girl named Peyton Kelly (Madison Pettis) shows up at Joe's door with the documents that prove she is his daughter. Why has Joe never heard of her before? It seems he was briefly married to Peyton's mother some years before, and when one of them visited the other to pick up some stuff after the divorce was finalized, they had one last fling for old time's sake. This is all handled very discretely, but we get the general idea.

And why did Peyton's mother not give Joe any warning? Indeed, why did she drop Peyton off so unceremoniously at the apartment, without even accompanying her to make sure Joe could look after her? Well, Peyton has an explanation for this, and parts of it do check out, but we suspect something is amiss when Peyton gets a call asking how her ballet class is going, and Peyton's immediate next move is to ask Joe to get her some ballet lessons so that she can send pictures back to her mom.

So in addition to all his other woes—his daughter feeds him cookies that trigger his allergies, she "bedazzles" his clothes and redecorates his apartment, she makes a huge mess in the kitchen, and a bubble bath gets way, way, way out of hand—Joe now has to sit with the moms in a dance class. And then the teacher, Monique Vasquez (Roselyn Sanchez), recruits him to be a part of the upcoming performance itself—as though he needed to go this extra mile in order to be a better dad.

Roselyn Sanchez as Monique, Peyton's dance teacher

Questions abound. Can a football star with endorsement deals and a full-time agent really take time out of his busy schedule to learn a new skill at the last minute for what is, in essence, the school play? Is Peyton supposed to be somewhere else, and taking ballet lessons there? And if so, why does no one come asking for her when she begins showing up at press conferences and on front-page newspaper stories with her dad? The film has a few answers, but nothing particularly convincing.

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