"The Game"

Here’s the plan.

In football, the quarterback’s job is to know the playbook like the back of his hand. In Disney’s new movie “The Game Plan,” the main character Joe Kingman (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) does just that. He’s at the peak of his career as the star quarterback for the Boston Rebels, and he lives the single lifestyle in his penthouse with his bulldog, Spike. The championship game is a month away, and everything seems to be going as planned until one day an eight-year-old girl named Peyton Kelly (Madison Pettis) shows up at his door claiming he’s her long-lost father. Peyton was the daughter of Joe’s ex-wife Sara, who never told him about their daughter and according to Peyton, had sent her to stay with him for a month while she was away in Africa.

From there on, Joe has to quickly learn the responsibilities that come with being a parent, which is very tough for him since he’s always had the “all about me” ego.

This movie is packed with humorous scenes, most of them either involving Joe’s teammate Kyle Cooper (Hayes MacArthur) or Joe trying to balance his career while experiencing the stresses of parenthood. You’ll see that having Peyton gradually affects Joe’s behavior and his outlook on his priorities. Over the course of a month, Joe and Peyton grow close to one another, but a surprise twist in the plot leaves Joe wondering what really matters the most in his life. Metaphorically, Peyton had been playing “kid” all her life, and Joe had just started playing “dad,” which is what scared him the most since he didn’t exactly know how to handle the situation. Joe was so used to knowing what to do in every play and the discovery of his daughter really threw him off.

This 110-minute long film seemed to drag on in the beginning, but ended up being cute and lightly humorous with a good message.

-Hannah Stortz

'The Kingdom

Exploding onto the screen, “The Kingdom” makes quite the impression. It draws the audience in with intense action then holds them in suspense until the very end. But a big movie means big names. Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman all play the roles of an FBI team trying to find out who planned a suicide bombing in an American kingdom in the Middle East.

Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) leads a team of FBI agents into Saudi Arabia to uncover the mastermind that planned the slaughter of innocent Americans. Soon after Fleury was being briefed about the situation, another bombing occurs killing more innocent bystanders. Fleury tries to assemble his team, which consists of Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper) and Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), and get them to land on Saudi Arabian soil to better perform their investigation.

This simple request seems to be quite the ordeal for the American and Saudi government. So with a little bit of sweet-talking, Fleury and his team are granted five days in Saudi Arabia to help uncover who did this, unbeknownst to the American government.

After landing at the Prince’s airport in Saudi Arabia, the team is greeted with a set of rules that will make their mission impossible. If restraints on the mission weren’t enough, Mayes is made to follow Muslim custom, and her being a woman makes her job even harder. After befriending a captain of the Saudi police, the team starts to get a little help. But Fleury and his pals have no idea what they are in store for.

Starting off with hard facts makes the movie seem so much more realistic. Through plot twists and shoot ‘em up scenes, “The Kingdom” will leave the audience satisfied. This movie will bring viewers from laughing to crying to bouncing with nervous anticipation. In the end most questions are answered, except one philosophical question: Will it ever end?

The violence is abrasive and should be avoided by those who can’t stomach innocent people being killed. Though all in all, “The Kingdom” is fantastic.

-Jonny Rice