Film

Some comic routines are guaranteed laughs: a lidless blender spraying goop all over the place, football players who cry, big macho guys doing ballet. Check with your friendly neighborhood eight-year-old, who will tell you that these are comic gold. And if that eight-year-old is your responsibility, feel free to take him or her to The Game Plan, which milks these and other broad gags in between bouts of sentiment. If you don’t have a rug rat, give this lame kiddie comedy a pass.

Johnson plays superstar quarterback Joe Kingman, whose bachelor lifestyle recalls Rock Hudson’s in Pillow Talk, complete with an apartment control system with a setting for “seduction.” Joe’s swinging days and big ego both get reined in by the arrival on his doorstep of adorable moppet Peyton (Pettis), who informs him that she’s the daughter he never knew he had. Mom, she explains, is in Africa for a month doing relief work, and has sent Peyton to stay with her unsuspecting daddy. Just to make things messier, Joe’s team is on its way to the championship game. Can a bachelor jock and an adorable ballet-loving tyke live together without driving each other crazy? More important, why is action-friendly Johnson making kiddie comedies?

Football players growl and cry, Johnson learns that being a parent is both hard and rewarding, and jokes are delivered with all the subtlety of a used-car dealer.