Daddy Day Care

Daddy Day Care

Genre:	Comedy Family
Directed By:	Steve Carr
Starring:	Eddie Murphy Jeff Garlin Steve Zahn Regina King Anjelica Huston
Photography:	Color
Distributed By:	Sony Pictures Releasing
Release Date:	May 9, 2003
Runtime:	92 minutes
Country:	United States
Sequel:	Daddy Day Camp (2007)

Daddy Day Care is a 2003 American family comedy film starring Eddie Murphy, Jeff Garlin, Steve Zahn, Regina King, and Anjelica Huston. Written by Geoff Rodkey and directed by Steve Carr, it marks Murphy and Carr's second collaboration after Dr. Dolittle 2. The film was released in the United States on May 9, 2003, by Columbia Pictures. A sequel, Daddy Day Camp was released on August 8, 2007, which got even worse, but was a modest box office success.

Plot

While his wife, Kim (Regina King), brings home the bacon, unemployed Charlie (Eddie Murphy) spends his days caring for the couple's young son. With help from a friend, Phil (Jeff Garlin), Charlie decides to start a day care center. Enrollment quickly surges, and, as they add another employee, goofy Marvin (Steve Zahn), Charlie finds himself dealing with endless red tape. Will he be able to keep the business afloat, or will parents defect to Mrs. Harridan's (Anjelica Huston) day care center?

Bad Qualities

The idea of having a "Daddy Daycare" is extremely weak with the cliches from the other movie, Kindergarten Cop.
Let’s get the elephant out of this room: The film overuses toilet humor, which gets rather exhausting and dull after a while.
The plot is pretty tiresome and awkward.
Most of the characters are bland and unlikable. Some of the kids, in particular, act extremely childish.
Lots of inappropriate jokes in a kids' movie. For example, there is a scene where Charlie is clearly about to spell out "fuck" to fool his young son, and another scene also shows Charlie saying "hell." While it isn't much of a swear, it goes too far off of the PG rating.
Some sadistic moments, especially towards Charlie and Phil. For no apparent reason, it seems to be okay for many children to kick them in the groin and despite doing so, their mothers don't ground nor reprimand them as if it was normal to kick people in the groin.
Terrible acting, especially for Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garlin.
The CGI bubbles that a kid wearing a Flash suit in one scene look incredibly fake and disgusting.
The story is very poorly-written.
Too much product placement (from Apple, Panda Express, Oreo, Little Debbie’s, Goldfish, Coca-Cola, and Dr. Seuss).
The ending scene is just inaccurate, as it has a lot of unfunny moments.
False Advertising: Some of the posters show a dog being with the kids when in the actual film, there is no dog present except in one scene only.

Good Qualities

There are a few funny moments here, especially in the ending credits.
The soundtrack isn't too bad.
At the end of the day, it is one of those "so bad, it's good" movies. So it was meant to be bad.
The Klingon-speaking kid is funny.
The scene where Charlie reads Green Eggs & Ham is really funny to watch, despise the book being product placement.

Reception

Daddy Day Care received negative reviews from critics, holding a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 131 reviews, with an average rating of 4.51/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Daddy Day Care does its job of babysitting the tots. Anyone older will probably be bored". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 39 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".