The Game Plan (2007)
Directed by Andy Fickman
Written by Nichole Millard, Kathryn Price
Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Madison Pettis, Kyra Sedgwick, Morris Chestnut, Roselyn Sanchez
Release Date September 28th, 2007
Published September 27th. 2007
"We're through the looking glass here people" Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone's JFK. How does this quote relate, in any way, to the innocuous family comedy The Game Plan starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson? Well, ffter watching it, I'm convinced that a conspiracy is afoot. The Walt Disney company is hiding something and I think I know what it is. I'll save the conspiracies for later in the review. I will tell you now; that despite this evil conspiracy, The Rock damn near makes this innocuous, ineffectual, family comedy worth throwing away a Saturday afternoon on. Almost.
In The Game Plan The Rock plays 'The King" aka Joe Kingman, the professional football MVP who is leading his Boston Rebels team to the championship. The swinging bachelor parties late into the night, he has a room where he keeps Chanel branded presents on standby for his favorite girlfriends, and he is something of a jerk to teammates, especially those who put family ahead of having a good time.
Naturally, Joe has his comeuppance coming and it comes in the form of 8 year old Peyton (Madison Pettis) who claims to be his daughter. Indeed, she is the daughter of Joe's ex-wife. The marriage broke up not long after they wed. The wife kept the wedding to herself but now that an emergency has called her out of the country for a month, she's ready to let Joe meet Peyton. Well, that's Peyton's version of events, mom may not actually know what her daughter is up to.
You don't exactly need a map to see where this one is headed. As directed by Andy Fickman (She's The Man), The Game Plan is as rote and formulaic as any Disney, non-animated, movie. Typical Lessons are learned by daddy and daughter, minor crises arise and are resolved, and if you think that daddy and daughter will end up apart, clearly you don't go to the movies very often.
The one thing that keeps The Game Plan from becoming The Pacifier Part Deux is the presence of The Rock. The former WWE wrestling champion is a highly charismatic presence. Highly likable with a tremendous ability to laugh at himself, the Rock keeps The Game Plan from becoming too treacly and syrupy, though he can't avoid the pitfalls of predictability.
There is a strange parallel between this kind of bland, harmless family comedy and movies like Rob Zombie's Halloween and that is a sneaky sort of conservatism. Family movies and horror movies both reinforce so-called traditional family values. In Halloween, for example, sins are punished by a vengeful god figure, reinforcing traditional Christian values by killing people, especially those sinners who engage in premarital sex.
In The Game Plan, traditional family values are reinforced by showing the life of a swinging single male to be empty and devoid of meaning and fulfillment. It is not until Joe meets his daughter and begins building a family, including a potential new mommy in Roselyn Sanchez, his daughter's ballet teacher, that Joe's life begins to gain meaning. There is no biblical punishment for Joe should he not get on the right path but, as laid out in this mindless, Disney universe, Joe's life will be meaningless without the traditional family structure.
Conspiracy? Maybe. But it's not the only conspiracy at work in The Game Plan. Cue spooky X-Files scene transition music. I'm now convinced of a Disney conspiracy alongside my family values conspiracy. The mouse house is hiding a terrifying piece of technology somewhere in the bowels of the magic kingdom. It's a computer running a program that writes bland, inoffensive, family movie scripts that feature the same predictable moments of pathos, bathos, bathroom humor and slapstick, all wrapped up in a happily ever after bow.
Just think what horrors might be unleashed if this technology were to fall into the wrong hands. For goodness sake Disney, destroy this computer before it destroys us all by creating the ultimate bland, inoffensive family comedy and lulls all of us into a state of mild amusement and mindless familiarity.
Ok, despite my conspiracy theories, there is nothing even modestly dangerous about The Game Plan. In fact, if you are desperate for a family movie, you could do much worse than this. Though I won't remember this movie in about an hour, I wasn't entirely bored while watching it because Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is such a charmer.
Though I think The Game Plan will be a hit at the box office I wouldn't worry about seeing it opening weekend. It won't be long before this simpleminded PG rated comedy will run on an endless loop on The Disney Channel or ABC Family, or on some conspiratorial combination of TBS, WGN and TNT, hmm, I wonder who's behind all of this. Sorry, just theorizing again.
