Déjà Vu All Over Again
Walt Disney Pictures The Game Plan, according to material provided by the studio, began when producers Gordon Gray and Mark Ciardi—partners in Mayhem Pictures, the production team behind uplifting Disney sports melodramas The Rookie, Miracle, and Invincible, all based on real life events—“got a wild idea.” They thought it would be a lot of fun to try something completely different—a comedy starring former professional wrestler turned actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Working with Mayhem development executive Nichole Millard, the trio says they were quickly inspired.
“We love movies about the triumph of an underdog, but that’s not exactly what you think about when it comes to ‘The Rock’,” said Gray. “So we started thinking about that perspective. We also knew that Dwayne had played football at the University of Miami, and that he was the father of a young girl. So we sat down with Nichole Millard to come up with a story that might combine all those elements. And that evolved into The Game Plan.”
There’s just one problem. The Game Plan has been made several times before, four in fact. Twice under the name of the Damon Runyon short story it’s based on, Little Miss Marker, and once as Sorrowful Jones, starring Bob Hope and Lucille Ball. The 1962 film 40 Pounds of Trouble, starring Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette and filmed on location in Disneyland, is also based on Runyon’s story.
In The Game Plan, Joe “The King” Kingman is the freewheeling, shallow, self-absorbed quarterback of the Boston Rebels football team. His carefully structured world, however, is turned upside down when Peyton Kelly (Madison Pettis), the eight year old daughter he never knew he had, appears at his front door and tells him she's in need of a place to stay while her mom, Joe’s long-lost ex, is off saving lives in Africa.
In Little Miss Marker and the Hope-Ball remake, freewheeling, shallow, self-absorbed bookie Sorrowful Jones has his carefully structured life turned upside down when left in possession of “Marky” (Shirley Temple in the original 1934 film), a little girl whose gambling addicted father leaves her as a marker for a bet he doesn’t have the cash to cover. After loosing the bet, he commits suicide, and Jones is left with the child.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and newcomer Madison Pettis in Walt Disney Pictures The Game Plan.
Photo credit Ron Phillips. Image copyright© Disney Enterprises all rights reserved.
Both Kingman and Jones are surrounded by a cadre of colorful characters, none of whom, with Kingman’s case the one exception, would ever be considered candidates for father of the year. Joe’s posse comprises his hard playing, both on and off the field, teammates. Sorrowful’s companions are all loveable Runyonesque crooks and thugs.
In both stories, the winsome young waifs touch the hearts of these gruff, rough, and tumble characters bringing out their softer, kinder, gentler sides and, in the case of Joe and Sorrowful, their fatherly instincts. Additionally, both Kingman and Jones find love along the way.
There are many more virtually identical comparisons between The Game Plan and its predecessors, but you get the idea. The only real difference between this 21st century telling of the story and the four earlier films is that at least the producers of those films credited Runyon for creating the original source material.
Déjà Vu, Part Two
As for the film itself, it’s not very good. The well-chosen cast does a good job with the material they’re given. The problem is that stringing together 210 minutes of clichés you can see coming from outer space doesn’t make for a very satisfying movie-going experience regardless of how good a job the actors do.
Early in the film, shortly after meeting her father, Peyton asks him a series of questions she’s prepared just for this day. You just know one of the things she’s going to ask is what was the most important day of his life. Even as the egocentric Kingman debates which of his many glorious moments on the gridiron embodies the most important day of his life, you can see the moment coming near the end of film when the imposing athlete, humbled and tear stained, says he now knows that meeting his daughter for the first time was the most important day of his life.
Sure enough, that moment does arrive right before the climatic and obligatory “big game” scene.
In case you’re too detached from your own intellect or emotions to realize when you’ve just seen or heard something stirring and emotional, the producers of The Game Plan crank up the volume on the soundtrack and flood the theatre with a tsunami of heart tugging piano and violin chords. It feels as if the entire film is filled with wall-to-wall music cues telling us what to feel and when.
In another sign that the production team feared taxing the consciousness of the audience, they’ve made most of the supporting characters little more than cardboard cutouts of real people.
To call the portrayal of most of Kingman’s teammates cartoonish is to insult cartoons everywhere.
Roselyn Sanchez and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in Walt Disney Pictures The Game Plan.
Photo credit Ron Phillips. Image copyright© Disney Enterprises all rights reserved.
The Rock by Any Other Name
“The Rock” is an excellent choice to play Joe “The King” Kingman. For most of his professional wrestling career, The Rock was a bad guy, but one that audiences loved because he never took his role that seriously. The Rock was always villainous, with a small “v”, and his pre- and postmatch performances were noted for their light comedic touch.
As The King, The Rock makes Joe likeable because of, rather than in spite of, his frat-boy lifestyle, which in turn makes it all the easier to embrace his emotional growth as a father. He has a genuine chemistry with Roselyn Sanchez (Monique Vasquez), ballet mistress at Peyton’s ballet school. One of the few genuinely funny moments in the film comes during a montage of scenes of Sanchez attempting to teach Kingman enough ballet to be a tree in his daughter’s upcoming school production.
The job of portraying Peyton Kelly falls to 7-year-old Madison Pettis of Arlington, Texas. And a hard job it must have been. Part Bedazler loving, little girl and part Hannibal Lecter, Peyton moves between precocious child and cold, calculating master manipulator in the blink of the eye.
As a character, Peyton is never allowed to develop a personality of her own. She is simply a device used by the writers and director to goad the other characters along and manipulate the audience’s feelings. In all, the young Ms. Pettis does an admirable job given the thankless task she’s been handed.
Also making lemonade out lemons are Kyra Sedgwick, as Joe’s money-obsessed agent Stella Peck, and Morris Chestnut, as wide receiver Travis Sanders, the lone grownup among the Boston Rebels players.
Actor, writer, stand-up comedian, and former college football quarterback, Hayes MacArthur does a remarkable job attempting to salvage the humanity in Rebel player Kyle Cooper. In the end, however, Cooper, as written, is so stultifyingly dim, instead of laughing, we soon begin to pity him.
Actor, writer, comic and college football quarterback Hayes MacArthur in
Walt Disney Pictures The Game Plan.
Photo credit Ron Phillips. Image copyright© Disney Enterprises all rights reserved.
Swing and a Miss
In July of 2006, shortly after announcing it was cutting back on the number of live action films it would produce, Walt Disney Studios laid off over 600 people. Among those to find themselves on the unemployment line was Nina Jacboson, who for the preceding eight years had been the studio’s head of production. It was Jacobson’s job to decide what films would and would not be made by Disney.
Oren Aviv, the studio’s head of marketing, replaced Jacobson. Disney Company thinking at the time was that Aviv’s worldwide marketing expertise would be better suited to fill the newer, limited slate with general market films. According to published reports, The Game Plan is the first film put into production by Aviv. D –
Walt Disney Pictures Presents
A Mayhem Pictures Production
The Game Plan
Directed by Andy Fickman
Written by Nichole Millard and Kathryn Price
Rated: PG
Kyra Sedgwick, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Madison Pettis in
Walt Disney Pictures The Game Plan.
Photo credit Ron Phillips. Image copyright© Disney Enterprises all rights reserved.
