By Claude Mills, Staff Reporter
The kids are all right, but not necessarily the grown-ups as two out-of-work advertising executives played by Eddie Murphy (left) and Jeff Garlin decide to go into the child care business - Contributed
DO YOU remember when Eddie Murphy used to be funny?
After a dismal year of the 'grown-up flops', I Spy, Showtime, and Pluto Nash, Murphy has retreated to familiar territory family flicks.
This latest effort Daddy Day Care although funny in parts, is a complete sell-out experience for Eddie Murphy fans from the late '80s. He is now content to play second banana to dirty diapers and adorable kids a witless clone of himself. However, you have to give him his props, this movie has already made over US$81 million, and knows his target audience - pint-sized kids who don't know any better.
During the opening credits of the movie, the song Walking on Sunshine is briefly interrupted by the sound of Murphy's movie son, Ben (Khamani Griffin) urinating in a toilet. Once he's finished, the song resumes. This sets the bar for the rest of the movie.
The plot of the movie revolves around Charlie Hinton (Eddie Murphy), as a midlevel marketing executive at a big food conglomerate, and his friend Phil (Jeff Garlin) who are consumed by their jobs to the point where they spend precious little time with their families.
However, when their marketing campaign for broccoli-flavoured Veggie-Os deservedly tanks, Hinton and his partner get canned. Six weeks later, and, Hinton watches as his wife, Kim (Regina King), goes to work in a law firm, and eventually hatches the ghastly idea with his partner-in-dumb, Garlin, of starting their own day-care centre. Enter Daddy Day Care.
What follows next is a series of recycled jokes about the ineptitude of men as caregivers, and of course, kiddie sugar highs, poop jokes, potty problems, crying jags, the chaos of 12 four-year-olds running around, and a list of other domestic dad dunderheads.
Some of the gags are entertaining in spite of the juvenile humour if you think the overweight Garlin getting kicked in the nuts a few times funny - and laughingly predictable storyline. As Daddy Day Care grows in status, it begins to siphon away kids from the institution of Ms. Gwyneth Harridan (Anjelica Huston), the strict headmistress of the ritziest pre-school in town, Chapman Academy, where the kids learn four languages and discuss the theories of the psychologist Freud.
Huston plays the evil matriarch with the panache of Glenn Close's Cruella de Ville, and resorts to underhanded tactics to sabotage a 'Daddy Day Care' fund-raiser where goats are set loose, roaches infest the salad, and everyone gets drenched by water sprinklers.
Steve Zahn earns big laughs as Marvin, the Star Trek-loving goofball who helps out with the kids, while stone-faced comedian Jonathan Katz is memorable as the Children's Services agent with a soft spot for children.
To be fair to Murphy, there are moments in the film where his charisma shines through, for instance, in his character's scenes with his son, Ben, and in his facial contortions at some of the bathroom shenanigans of the children. But it is a sheer battle of the gag reflex to see the depths that Eddie Murphy has sunk to, and in such a spectacular fashion.
While Daddy Day Care is funny in parts, it registers a pang of sadness in the hearts of loyal fans to see that the once-edgy comedian who gave us 48 Hours, Raw and Coming to America, is now a shadow of his former self.
Somewhere Bill Cosby, who Murphy once publicly derided as a sell-out for being a Jell-O pitchman, must be laughing his head off.
It's funny how life turns out sometimes, isn't it?
Look who's laughing now.
