Review: 'Game Plan' Has Predictable Playbook

'The Game Plan' (PG)(out of four)

Perfect for the Disney Channel set, "The Game Plan" has its share of cute, including bedazzled footballs, an overflowing bubble bath and a bulldog in a tutu.

In the new movie, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, best known for his days as a smackdown wrestler-turned-action hero, turns on the charm as Joe Kingman, the king of Boston football. And even though Kingman can take on 300-pound linebackers, an 8-year-old girl named Peyton (Madison Pettis), who shows up claiming to be his daughter, sacks him soon after arriving at his doorstep.

Although the film is filled with everything you'd expect, "The Rock" has proven he can pull off just about anything, even a sugar-coated line like: "You've been playing kid your entire life and I just joined the Dad team."

Unexplained situations go unnoticed such as how the 8-year-old managed to slip away from her mother, who is off to some far-flung place to do relief work and can't be reached, and how Kingman takes so quickly to becoming a dad and is comfortable in wearing green tights as co-star in Peyton's ballet school debut. "You're a freakishly large man and you're telling me you're incapable of playing a tree?" says Monique, the ballet mistress at Monique's Ballet School. Johnson plays a tree and does it well. Not only did he have to learn the mechanics of being a quarterback for the role, but Johnson said he also had to attend ballet school.

By the way, Boston fans will revel in the fact that Kingman plays for fictional team the Boston Rebels, yet in this Beantown, Tom Brady doesn't exist, but that's only in the movies, kids.

Yet all of this is just window-dressing for some fun fish-out-of-water scenes for both Kingman and Peyton. Kingman's posh penthouse (the director couldn't find the right penthouse in Boston, so they built the pad themselves in a warehouse) is turned into a place where Barbie dolls and bedtime stories rule. For Peyton, a protein shake isn't her idea of breakfast.

There are lots of gags for kids and some eye candy for parents to enjoy, too. However, a scene that deserved to end up on the cutting room floor was actually director Andy Fickman indulging one of Johnson's passions. Johnson got a chance to showcase his own love for Elvis Presley by singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight" to lullaby the little girl to sleep, but it had the under-10-year-old moviegoers squirming in their seats at a recent screening.

In the end, it's exactly what you'd expect from the studio whose bread and butter is the Happiest Place on Earth. Kingman realizes that with all of his riches, endorsements and touchdowns, he's really been missing out on what matters the most, and through it all he learns patience and selflessness. Cue the hug between the big guy and the dimple-faced kid.

But while Joe "The King" Kingman says, "he's not qualified for this," proves he's more meat than muscle.