If “The Game Plan” lead character, Joe Kingman, would have ran into former pro wrestler, The Rock, he would have asked him if he could “smell what he was cookin’,” and then preceded to give him a “rock bottom” for being an egotistical jerk and terrible father.

Unfortunately, he would have to apply the move on himself since The Rock a.k.a. Dwayne Johnson plays Joe Kingman in Andy Fickman’s Disney film, “The Game Plan.”

Fickman, who may be recognized for his last film, “She’s the Man,” with Amanda Bynes, basically takes every stereotype about football and ballet, and forcefully blends it with the classic Disney film formula.

The results, as you can imagine, are less than satisfactory.

For the first half, the film drags and feels too unrealistic at times. The jokes are really stale, and many of the side characters feel unoriginal. It essentially feels like every other movie of its kind, where a big-muscled man needs to be hit over the head repeatedly with the obvious stick until he forces himself to see the importance of sentimentality.

The plot is interesting, but, again, conventional. Kingman, an NFL quarterback with a fetish for Elvis, is living a great, rich life and on his way to his ultimate goal – winning the championship. He is tragically flawed with being obsessed with himself, but he has no regrets with his imperfections.

He gets quite a shock when he finds out he has an 8-year-old daughter, Peyton (Madison Pettis), from a previous relationship, who has been left at his door to stay with him for a month.

The acting in this film is nothing to get excited about, but there are some surprising performances. Johnson does as well as he can with the material he gets. He uses his natural charisma to really pull off the effect of a larger-than-life persona, though that may not be much of a stretch for him.

Pettis also does a great job with her adult, yet innocent, approach. But her performance is also hampered by the screenwriting, as they make her too adult at times. It’s great that they made her intelligent, and the idea of role-reversal is evident, but fully packaged together, it seems over-the-top.

Just about the time when it seems this film will completely flop, the movie seems to recharge for the second half. Somewhere right in the middle of the film, “The Game Plan” starts to feel sincere with its plot and its characters and overall, improves. Sure, it still fits the Disney formula and even the plot twists seem expected (because without them this film would really be nothing).

The turnaround really has to go back to the performances. When Kingman sings Elvis’ famous, “Are you lonesome tonight?” to Peyton, it emulates a real passion that a father-daughter relationship would, and should, have.

There was some interesting technical work done in the film as well. In one scene, where Kingman is in his ridiculously, high-tech home, he sits alone in the dark and there is a giant photo of himself behind him. The scene is powerful because it conveys the message that material is not what life is about, a theme that this movie is based around.

“The Game Plan” does not make up for it’s trite beginning, but it does make a valiant effort to come back at the end, which makes to movie worth seeing – as a rental at the video store.