My Review of 'Daddy Day Care'

I've heard of the movie Daddy Day Care when it first came out. I wasn't really interested in watching it back then, and I wasn't sure if I was interested in watching it now. Recently, my girlfriend asked me to watch it with her. She said she had a good time watching it when she was younger. She's agreed to watch some of the dumb stuff that I've forced her to watch, so I agreed to watch this one and here's what happened.

This movie came out back in 2003, and I think this was entering the tail-end of the last popular Eddie Murphy movies. At the time, he was still a huge star and his movies were being promoted nationwide. He kind of disappeared not too long after this time period. I don't think he disappeared altogether because he has had a few movies come out sporadically, but he is not making movies as consistently anymore. I used to really enjoy Eddie Murphy movies, so it can't be all that bad. Besides one of the family movies he made around 10 years later called A Thousand Words was actually pretty good, but no one really talked about it.

First and foremost, this is definitely a family friendly movie. There are some pretty big stars in this movie and they all ham it up for the audience, like Steve Zahn, Regina King, Lacey Chabert, Angelica Huston, and even Elle Fanning as a little kid. Eddie Murphy plays as Charlie Hinton. Him and his good friend Phil (played by Jeff Garlin) both work as advertisers for a cereal company. They wanted to create a healthy kids cereal, but it didn't work out too well. Eventually, the two get fired from the company and are put on unemployment for a good period of time. They're both down and out and aren't necessarily the best fathers to their own children.

Charlie suddenly gets this idea of opening up his own dare care with his friend Phil. As you would guess with two absentminded fathers, they don't do too well in the business, but they continue to work at it to become more efficient. In turn, they gain a better rapport with their own children with this new day care and build better relationships with the kids in their daddy day care.

I'm not really used to family friendly movies like this, so it was a little unusual when I see all the actors overacting to get a reaction out of the audience. Also, I couldn't help but notice that there were so many prat falls and juvenile accidents that these guys get into—in particular, Phil. If you can get over the simple plot devices and the numerous prat falls, then you can enjoy the core of this movie. This movie's main lesson is that family is more important than prestige and money.

I can see how this can be a pretty good family film. A lot of young children will enjoy some of the jokes, the crazy overacting, and the numerous prat falls. This is geared toward this demographic and there's enough in here where adults won't get too bored or aggravated while watching it. It's clean fun for the whole family and still seems okay to watch even for today's politically correct climate.

Overall, I thought it was an okay movie. I wouldn't want to watch it over and over again, but it was alright to watch for my first time. I'll give this movie a six out of 10. Those that grew up with this movie will probably have a much deeper connection to this movie. In comparison to Eddie Murphy's other films, I would place this below the middle of the pack, but then again, Eddie Murphy has a huge library of movies to select from.