The new Disney film The Game Plan, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as an egotistical football player who ends up babysitting an eight year old daughter he never knew he had, led the U.S. box office over the weekend, taking in a solid $22.7 million.

The film is an unacknowledged remake of the excellent 1934 film Little Miss Marker, which starred Shirley Temple and Adolph Menjou and was based on a Damon Runyon story, "Markie." Menjou plays a bookie who accepts a little girl, Temple, as a marker to ensure that her father pays a gambling debt for which he did not have ready cash, expecting the father to be back in a matter of minutes. After the father commits suicide, Menjou is stuck taking care of the girl. It’s a warm, funny, meaningful film.

Three other movies based directly on the same story were made in ensuing years: Sorrowful Jones, in 1949, with a delighful performance by Bob Hope in his cinematic prime is the flat-out funniest of the lot; there was also the 1963 film 40 Pounds of Trouble, starring Tony Curtis; and Little Miss Marker, in 1980, starring Walter Matthau and Bob Newhart.

As noted earlier, The Game Plan is that most economical kind of remake: the unacknowledged remake. Instead of a bookie, the protagonist is a pro football quarterback, and instead of being left as a marker on a bet, the little girl turns up unexpectedly on his doorstep, supposedly having been arranged by her mother for him to take care of her while Mom is in Africa helping the poor. (Of course this explanation turns out to be untrue, and there is a little turn toward tragedy—or bathos—late in the film that is analogous to the situation in the original story.)

Dwayne Johnson has his usual charisma, although his acting ability at this point is not nearly strong enough to excel at a comedy of this sort, much less bear comparison to Menjou, Hope, Curtis, and Matthau. That’s a tall order indeed.

The film is funny and enjoyable nonetheless, and has some rather touching moments. In short, it’s a real Disney film: professional, entertaining, and cheeky, but earnest at heart.

The earnest aspect of this film is actually quite interesting and perhaps rather surprising, as it is actually part of the trend of feminization of the American male noted on this site last week. Unlike the similar 2005 film The Pacifier, a delightful comedy in which Vin Diesel plays a superspy action hero who changes a family of spoiled suburban kids (for the better) much more than they change him, in The Game Plan the hypermuscular former wrestler known as The Rock is subjected to a cultural reeducation into the superiority of femininity.

Johnson’s character, Joe Kingman, is initially narcissistic, arrogant, egotistical, and selfish both on the field and off. Only after dancing in a ballet and being reeducated by his eight-year-old daughter, his sister-in-law, and the daughter’s dance teacher does he finally win a Super Bowl ring.

In today’s culture, women even make the best football coaches.

The filmmakers make it all as convincing as possible, and as noted earlier the movie is fun to watch, but it is definitely weird to see The Rock crumble in this way. Still, I suspect audiences will enjoy it and it will continue to do well at the box office.

And they will surely assimilate the message without realizing it.