Karnataka   

Only for the Rock

Game Plan (English)

Cast: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Madison Pettis

Director: Andy Fickman

“This is the silliest stuff I have ever seen,” one can almost hear the Amazonian Hippolyta comment. However, one would rather not waste the Bard of Avon on this hopelessly predictable, manipulative, schmaltzy offering from Disney.

The movie is so generic that it is totally not funny. Okay, there is a hugely successful quarterback, Joe Kingman, who does not have a life beyond football. He is self-centred and has a separate room for his trophies no less. And then just as he is zooming through his happy life with trophy girlfriend, mealy mouthed agent, an eight-year-old daughter, Peyton, he never knew about emerges on his doorstep to turn his life upside down.

So there is a sea of pink as Peyton rearranges Joe’s life. The dog has its nails painted pink and wears a tutu, the football is bedazzled, Joe takes Peyton to ballet class, flips for tough-talking ballet teacher, learns all the answers to life, the universe and everything, wins the big final and all’s well that ends well. The movie, apart from being a sea of product placements, beats every cliché to death. It is a sports movie, a tweener film, a parenting one and has every ingredient of the formula of these genres slapped on any which way. So you have the big sports performance, you have the big school performance, the cute moppet with unruly curls and big, big eyes, the toughie with a soft centre, and so on and so forth.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a very likeable, bankable action star and he gives his role as the self-centred Joe Kingman his all. If there is any reason to watch this film it is for his performance, as Madison Pettis as Peyton is cutsie to the point of outright irritating.

MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER

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