The Chaperone

For a wrestler-turned-actor vehicle, The Chaperone isn't all bad. There are plenty of supporting players who do a decent job with their roles, especially Winter as the confused and hurt Sally and Yeardley Smith (the voice of Lisa Simpson) as the frazzled junior-high sponsor in charge of the trip. Corrigan can always be counted on to be a funny gangster type, and it's good to see that '80s favorite Gish can still pop up as the occasional mom in a movie, even if she has very little to do here.

Even Levesque himself isn't horrible; he's just trying to fit one of the two acceptable roles for WWE wrestlers -- guys out for revenge (The Marine) or scary dudes who are secretly great at childcare (think Dwayne Johnson). The problem is that the movie's script is a tired amalgamation of one too many family film cliches. There's the kids-save-the-day formula, plus the reformed ex-con times the deadbeat dad trying to redeem himself. And, of course, the Home Alone bits of physical comedy meshed with violence -- like criminals who crash into dirty diaper trucks or who are generally outsmarted by young, techno-savvy kids. Were this an ABC Family TV movie, it would be easy to forgive the trite storyline, but given that families have to pay to see this, it could and should be so much better.