There's Monroe (Jamal Duff), the big guy with the deep, imposing voice, and Webber (Brian White), who's the nondescript one. Need I tell you that Peyton's presence confuses and amuses the team at first? Need I mention that she learns the basics of football and is taken under the wing of the entire team? Do I even bother saying that Peyton begins to teach them all, especially her father, something about the nicer, sweeter things, like ballet and the importance of rhinestone accessorizing? The big guy cries right on cue at the end of her and Joe's ballet performance, the dumb one scolds an opposing player for using the word stupid, and the nondescript one stays in the background.

It's all expected, and screenwriters Nichole Millard and Kathryn Price don't fail to get all those predictable moments in. There's also a love interest in the form of Peyton's ballet teacher Monique (Roselyn Sanchez), who convinces Joe to take time out of his busy playoff schedule to rehearse for and participate in the recital as a tree. Joe is skeptical of ballet at first, but after a draining practice that leaves him winded and sweating, he admires the athleticism involved, although he's not a fan of the tights. There's conflict as Joe accidentally leaves his daughter at a bar, the truth about Peyton's mother's trip to Africa surfaces, and the big game inches closer, and it's nothing we don't expect or see coming from the start. Johnson pulls off the role with charm and surprising vulnerability, and the relationship between Joe and Peyton, as hackneyed as it starts and as cloying and unlikely as it ends, is occasionally touching, especially during a fight when Joe realizes how much his daughter is like her mother and their reconciliation soon after. The whole thing is too trite for the material to really be affecting, but there are moments.

Johnson carries the movie, but the weight of The Game Plan is too much. Here's yet another project that shows his potential, but he's still a movie star waiting in the wings for a star vehicle to really let him show what he has.