This is all Vin Diesel’s fault, isn’t it? After the fading action star became a box-office sensation all over again with The Pacifier, it must have seemed like a sure thing to take another smirking, muscle-bound emblem of machismo and force him to contend with the very unmacho task of raising a child. So poor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (slowly phasing out his pro-wrestling nickname) gets stuck in the Disney production The Game Plan, doing his best to smile his way through the story of star football player Joe Kingman, who is suddenly saddled with a daughter he never knew he had.
Johnson is a lot more charismatic than Diesel, and better-suited to comedies; he lampooned his image once already by playing a gay criminal in the lame Be Cool, and here he seems more than eager to subject himself to whatever humiliation the filmmakers have conjured up for him. But it’s that good-natured enthusiasm that actually makes the film seem sort of horrifying, since Johnson’s Joe, while certainly self-centered and materialistic, as is the requisite for all heroes of movies like this, doesn’t deserve the sadistic treatment he receives from long-lost daughter Peyton (Pettis).
Manipulative, vindictive and at least as selfish as Joe himself, Peyton throws her father’s life into disarray when she shows up on his doorstep just as his team is heading into the playoffs. Everything that follows is right out of the proverbial playbook, as the two antagonize each other at first and then of course form a strong bond, while both becoming better people. (Well, Joe becomes a better person; Peyton remains a pint-size bitch from hell.) Director Fickman and the three screenwriters drag this inevitability out for close to two hours, with a tiresome back-and-forth of conflicts and reconciliations. The jokes are tired, the characters are unpleasant cartoons, and Pettis gives the most annoying kid-actor performance since Dakota Fanning inflicted similar love-me-or-die ultimatums on Brittany Murphy in Uptown Girls. By the end of the movie, Johnson’s smile has shifted from winning to desperate. Vin Diesel, you have a lot to answer for.
The Game Plan
*
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Madison Pettis, Roselyn Sanchez
Directed by Andy Fickman
Rated PG
Opens Friday