Daddy Day Care Review
by Josh Gilchrist (joshgilch AT aol DOT com)July 15th, 2003
Josh Gilchrist's review of "Daddy Day Care"
zero our of * * * *
Although Eddie Murphy's new vehicle "Daddy Day Care" may look like a harmless bit of cinema, there are things that are very disturbing about the film. It's not that 75% of the jokes have a laugh quotient of zero. It's not that the screenplay seems to have been written in crayon by one of the many
four year olds in the film. What disturbed me the most was the films portrayal of parenthood.
Throughout the film's ninety minutes we are introduced to parents who don't care if their children aren't potty trained, and parents who let their kids do whatever they want. The kids are allowed to act so wild that, if not for the
fact that they walk and talk, a zoo keeper could mistake them for a wild animal
and shoot them with a tranquilizer.
This might all seem amusing if it were not so brutally true. We're also introduced to the parent who can't stand to be around their children too often so they just throw them into the day care so they don't have to bother.
The film features the stereotypical idiotic parents, clueless in the rules of child rearing. I'm no parent but it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that filling up children with as much sugar as they can eat is only going to bring on negative consequences.
Now, I understand that the film is intended to be a comedy and therefore must set up inane circumstances. It's the concept in general that lacks flavor. Yes, leaving Eddie Murphy in charge of taking care of numerous tykes is a hilarious concept. It would have been a hilarious concept for the Eddie Murphy of the 1980's but not the current Eddie. In "Daddy Day Care" he's been reduced playing second banana to a bunch of four year olds which is not a good way to showcase him.
The film begins with Charlie Hilton (Murphy) enjoying a plush job as an ad executive trying to sell vegetable tasting cereal to children. He and co-worker
Phil (Jeff Garlin) are fired after it is discovered that children would rather have sugar filled cereal. Who knew kids hated vegetables? The things you learn from "Daddy Day Care" are mind-blowing.
Charlie and Phil are unable to find employment and must settle for becoming Mr.
Moms. Charlie's wife (Regina King) is now the bread winner. Poor Charlie feels like a failure. That is, until he gets a genius idea! He and Phil must start a day care center so they can show off their lack of parenting skills to the whole town.
Now, every film needs a villain and this is Miss Haridan (Anjelica Houston), who runs a much costlier day care center in town. It's true that Haridan is evil, trying to squash the competition by any means necessary. The day care she
runs is outrageously portrayed as an evil institution in order to set up the film's final message. A message just as disturbing as the films portrayal of parenting. The message is that having kids learn is wrong since kids just want to have fun. Do the makers of this film not realize that a child's mind needs to be filled with as much knowledge as early as possible since these are the most formative years? There can, of course, be a happy medium between learning and having fun but the film disagrees.
I for one can't wait for the day when I see a film that dares to be sensible with its portrayal of matters instead of throwing out the same distorted rhetoric, thus adding to problems which already exist.
And you know the film is in trouble when they throw in a manic actor like Steve
Zahn to join the day care crew and he can't even muster up more than a few laughs. His use of pratfalls and mishaps went out of style after John Ritter overdid it on "Three's Company." Now it should seem beyond annoying to anyone above the age of 8.
Film audiences need to be forewarned about such blatant attempts to scam them out of their money. Essentially, that's all "Daddy Day Care" is, a manufactured film which is willing to capitalize on the fact that a sucker of a
filmgoer is born every minute.
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
