Delayed Reaction: The Game Plan

The Pitch: The Rock is a tough football player with a long lost daughter who cutes up his life.

How I Came Into It: I kind of love this weird sub-genre: The "tough guy gets funny" movie. It's that thing when action movie stars take on a family movie to round out their fan base. Some dip into it once, like Vin Deisel in The Pacifier. Others get very comfortable in it, like Arnold Schwatzenegger. The Rock, I'm sorry, Dwayne Johnson, is somewhere in the middle because he's never shied away from the comedies, but family films are not as common for him. Regardless, I've learned to set a low bar for these by the nature of them not setting a high bar for themselves.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) The Rock Dwayne Johnson is a solid comedic actor. He knows how to play up a scene for laughs and he does good work with Madison Pettis, who is a capable child actor. I'm rarely going to laud a child actor more than that. More than I expected, the emotional beats got to me. Dead mother is a cheap move. It's emotional manipulation, and I saw it coming, but dammit, it worked. Having the daughter with The Rock Johnson for a full month, rather than a couple days even made him missing her feel plausible.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: It almost goes without saying the none of the jokes really landed with me. And, if I'm being discerning here, there's no way someone doesn't try to collect child support from an MVP-level NFL quarterback. That's not even a greed thing. That's a "taking care of your child as best as you can" thing. That's a qualm for a "bar set high" movie though. This movie though is exactly what it needed to be.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend