Movie Review: Daddy Day Care (2003) seen on DVD and various streaming platforms

Comedy: some scene may be unsuitable for young children, brief violence and language, mature themes.

The movie follows Charlie Hinton, (played by Eddie Murphy,) who is a marketing executive for a food company. After losing his job due to a failed pitch, he decides to open a day care center which operates inside his home as he can no longer afford to send his young son Ben to a fancy private school that Ben was once attending

The movie opens with Ben waking up in the morning. After he goes downstairs, he finds his father Charlie asleep while on his laptop. Charlie says he must go to work while Ben requests that he stay home.

After failing a pitch for a new cereal called “Veggie O’s,” Charlie and his friend Phil, (played by Jeff Garlin,) are fired. Charlie however is sure he will find a job in no time. Six weeks later, he is still jobless which forces him and his wife Kim to pull Ben out of the private school they had just enrolled him in after his first day, due to their inability to afford it. After countless attempts at finding Ben a new daycare, (with each location failing for various reasons,) Charlie decides to open a day care center within his household believing taking care of kids is easy and is a good way to make money to avoid bankruptcy. He uses this to persuade Kim to accept the idea where she was originally opposed to it.

This idea is supported by Phil as despite being a father, he is unable to change his son’s dirty diapers due to being grossed out by the sight and smell of it. In one scene, he is shown being forced to change his baby’s diaper when he was an infant in a public bathroom. As he removes the diaper, the baby urinates on him.

As parents everywhere have recently found Chapman Academy, (the private school that Ben once attended,) to be too expensive, they decide to sign up for Charlie and Phil’s day care which they call “Daddy Day Care” despite apprehension from some parents who believe that two men are unable to do this job as they feel it is more for women.

On the first day, the children behave hyperactively as they disobey orders from Charlie and Phil. Charlie tries to do the rocket ship with some of them, (which is performed by him picking the child up and swinging him around while making noises related to a rocket ship. He does this with Ben frequently throughout the film.) However, eventually Charlie throws his back out doing the movie forcing Phil to try and get the children to engage in a sing along. This proves to work for a while until he runs out of songs to sing, prompting the children to create chaos around the home by damaging the furniture, throwing things around, and having pillow fights. At lunch time, Charlie and Phil give the children cupcakes and sugar resulting in them becoming even more hyper until ultimately falling asleep until parents come to pick them up.

After the headmistress of the Chapman Academy catches wind of “Daddy Day Care,” she attempts to have them shut down by calling child services multiple time to complain of infractions within the facility. Though the first two visits who the worker go well, they are given a warning that they must either find another building to run the daycare center out of or drop two of their children, as the policy states there can only be so many when a daycare center is run out of a home. With help from Charlie and Phil’s friend Marvin, (played by Steve Zahn,) they are able to secure a building called “The Final Frontier,” which Charlie and Phil believe is silly when they first hear about it. However, they soon agree with the idea upon hearing it is an actual place. In a last ditch effort to try and stop “Daddy Day Care,” the headmistress stops by Charlie’s house and offers to buy back all of the children from him. As he does not have the money needed to rent out the new building, he reluctantly accepts, thus reinstating all of the children back to the Chapman Academy.

In one scene, a fundraiser is held to raise the money to purchase the building where there is activities for the children such as a bouncy house, a petting zoo, face painting and food served. As everything seemed to be going well, the headmistress showed up and created chaos within the fundraiser by deflating the bouncy house, tampering with the food being served by planting live bugs in it, and releasing all of the animals from inside their structures. She ended her reign of terror by having all of the sprinklers turned on at once, drenching everybody in attendance. This forced everybody to demand their money back. By chance, Charlie gets a call from his old boss with an offer to reinstate him as a marketing executive. With no way to pay for the building, Charlie accepts and returns to work. He later changes his mind during a work meeting when he sees a picture of himself and Ben, (who had previously wanted him to continue with “Daddy Day Care.”) Deciding to put Ben first, Charlie quits his job as a marketing executive and find a way to get “Daddy Day Care” back in business.

As he arrives at the Chapman Academy to pick up the children, he manages to impress other parents who are in the middle of interviewing for a position at Chapman Academy by bragging about how much the children have learned while being a part of “Daddy Day Care.” This prompts them to instead enroll their children in “Daddy Day Care” as well.

The movie ends with the children playing inside the new building which is equipped with a jungle gym and an area for stories to be read among other things kids enjoy.

Though this was not a bad movie, it wasn’t my favourite one as the ending was very predictable. I knew from the first time I saw this movie that eventually Charlie would find a way to get the day care running.

One of the biggest problems in this movie is a lack of a proper conflict throughout. For the most part, I feel that despite little issues throughout, everything seems to be remedied in the next scene. The movie doesn’t seem to have that big of an issue needing to be solved and the one it does have is very weak. I think this would be the scene in which the child services worker tells Charlie and Phil they must find a new building to operate out of or get rid of two of their kids. By the next scene, Charlie, Phil and Marvin have already acquired a potential remedy for the problem as they have already found a new place they could work out of.

I suppose another problem could be Charlie and Kim’s inability to afford to send Ben to Chapman. However, the answer to this problem is actually the plot of the entire movie….for him to start his own day care for Ben to attend.

Despite some humourous scenes throughout, overall this movie wasn’t that great and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Movie rating: 2 out of 10