The Game Plan

Walt Disney Pictures, 110mins, PG
Directed by
Andy Fickman

Yes, folks, we have a winner! The 2007 Razzie awards will go to…this turkey. That there are other worthy entries this year is undoubtable, but this is about as vile a film as I've seen this year. The only one worse was shown only at the Sundance film festival last January, and as it wasn't picked up by anybody, doesn't count.

This is Disney and in wide release, and most certainly does.

What writers Nichole Millard, Kathryn Price, and Audrey Wells have done is come up with a horror movie about a sociopathic little bitch, who wreaks karmic revenge on a poor shlub who doesn't deserve it.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Joe Kingman character isn't a poor shlub, he's a rich quarterback for a major league team who's a bit full of himself, but this doesn't mean that he's due for some cosmic payback. It comes anyway, when a little girl named Peyton Kelly (Madison Pettis) literally comes out of nowhere, knocks on his door, and pretty much takes over his life.

Sure, there have been flicks about satanic kiddies before, going back to  “The Demon Seed” and “The Omen,” but rarely have they been directed toward the demographic of the villains depicted. [George Ratliff's “Joshua” was rated R] The only film even resembling this particular film was Brian Levant's “Are We There Yet?” and that clearly depicted the little monsters as little monsters.

Little Payton is cute as a button, which means that she's permitted to be a manipulative gold-digging bitch, despite the fact that she's only eight. This isn't a child; she's a midget with a master's degree, causing mayhem for it's own sake, pitiless and mean.

The adults are all morons, especially our hero's agent Stella(Kyra Sedgwick), with the exception of a ballet teacher named Monique (Roselyn Sanchez), who's there to be a kind of romantic interest, although there's no chemistry there. Someone at Disney needs a good talking to. This is the worst family film of the year…no, movie of the year. Period.


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