Punishment Revisited: Daddy Day Care

 Note: This review was written to fulfil my requirements as loser of the 2019 Summer Box Office Challenge. After two years with not enough theatrical films to do the challenge, I have returned to lose once again. To celebrate, here is the review for Daddy Day Care, the last of my 2019 punishment movies.:

My final punishment movie to talk about.  An Eddie Murphy film that doesn't have much love from movie fans.  At least it wasn't Norbit.  Well, because I don't know what's right for me, I ended up seeing Norbit as well.  Of my own free will.  Not super smart.

It's really hard for me to express just how much I loved Murphy when I was growing up.  Pirated cassette copies of Raw and Delirious got listened to over and over (with headphones, of course.  I couldn't be caught with those).  The sense of humour, the timing, the edge of it all really captured something in me, and he was one of the bigger influences when it came to comedy in my life.

Because of that, it is really hard to watch movies like Daddy Day Care and Norbit.  Everything that I had known about Murphy was gone, and what remained wasn't incredibly special.  It seriously hurts to say that.u  Watching one of the mastodons or your past being more generic than an early 2000s McConaughey was crushing.  Thankfully, both Murphy and McConaughey would come back to form further down the line.

Alongside Murphy in Daddy Day Care are Jeff Garlin and Steve Zahn, and I'm huge fans of both of them, and their potential is huge.  Looking at the IMDB page, seeing those three people together should indicate that something special was going to be seen.  Sadly to all, we never get to see the elements that make either of those talents shine.  The generic nature of the film robs us of what they could do, and convinced me that pretty much anyone could have been cast in those roles, because of how stale everything was.

Garlin and Murphy's characters lose their jobs, and while becoming stay at home dads they decide to open a day care.  Men looking after childern?, you exclaim.  But, men don't know how to look after children.  Surely this will all fall apart and it will be super funny, because, you know, the idea of men looking after children is for some reason super funny.  Super funny.  Men, allowed to be with children.  Gosh, what apocalypse has this modern work a day world unleashed on us?

Of course, being generic, there are people who don't want these men to succeed.  Because, you know... already mentioned, 'men looking after children?'  Essentially, this could have been an Adam Sandler movie.  The difference would have been Sandler would have made it for an older audience, and that really feels like the fault of Daddy Day Care.

I'm not suggesting that it needed to be R-rated because of sex and the men accidentally leaving toddlers in an industrial blast chiller.  When I look at the three main people, I think their talents would have worked much better in something that wasn't tailored to the entire family.  Each of them has their own type of delivery, and some of that revolves around a bit more crass than the ratings board would allow in a G-rated movie.  Once again, it doesn't need to be a hard R for extreme reasons, but more for the actions and reactions of the people they chose to cast.

Family friendly movies can be brilliant and wonderful.  I think it takes a huge amount of effort to be able to create something that will please the young and the old, and people should never look down on studios like Pixar because 'they're for the kids.'  However, certain movies shouldn't be made for the whole family, and this is one of them.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars

Note - no proofing!  I'm done with this nonsense!!!!!