I thought the 2003 comedy Daddy Day Care starring Eddie Murphy, Jeff Garlin, and Steve Zahn was a pretty entertaining way to spend 90 minutes. While the script itself wasn’t anything too terribly original, the project was helped out by a strong cast that, in addition to the leads, included recognizable names like Regina King, Lisa Edelstein, Lacey Chabert, Kevin Nealon, and Anjelica Huston. As a result, that film went on to gross over $100 million domestically (on a $60 million budget).
With a take like that, it’s not surprising that a sequel eventually emerged in the form of 2007’s Daddy Day Camp. I was expecting this movie to be like its predecessor: an enjoyable 90 minutes that provided a few decent laughs along the way. However, I should have taken heed of a couple of warning signs to indicate that Daddy Day Camp wouldn’t live up to these admittedly low expectations. First, the budget for this film was only $6,000,00, or 10 percent of what was given to the original. And second, NO ONE from the original project came back for this one. Yikes.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Charlie Hinton (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and Phil Reyerson (Paul Rae) have been running their successful Daddy Day Care franchise for years now. Things seem to be going well all around, until Charlie’s son Ben (Spencir Bridges) says that he wants to go to day camp. Charlie is a bit overprotective and doesn’t want to send his son away, but wife Kim (Tamala Jones) convinces him to give it a try.
So Charlie drives Ben out to Camp Driftwood, which, incidentally, was the same camp that Charlie himself attended as a youth. Charlie is horrified to discover that Camp Driftwood is now completely run down and shabby, with no campers to speak of. The reason? Just down the road is Camp Canola, an upscale day camp that offers kids such activities as paintball and ATVs. Everyone is flocking their instead, much to the delight of Canola owner Lance Warner (Lochlyn Munro).
Charlie remembers what a jerk Lance was during their own camp days, so he refuses to send Ben to Camp Canola. Instead, he ends up partnering with the owner of Driftwood to try to revitalize the camp before the bank forecloses on it. According to a bank official, Charlie needs to get at least 30 campers to sign up in order to have a chance at keeping possession of the camp.
So the rest of the film deals first with Charlie and Phil’s attempts to get Camp Driftwood into shape in order to attract customers, and then with their mission of beating Camp Canola in the Intercamp Olympics. Each storyline plays out as expected, and there are absolutely no funny or surprising scenes to help the plot along.
My Reaction: One of the most frequently asked questions about Hollywood has to be, “What the hell happened to Cuba Gooding, Jr.?” He had such a promising career ahead of him after winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Jerry Maguire, but since then he has been in so many crappy films that it makes me cringe to read his IMDB filmography. Snow Dogs, Boat Trip, The Fighting Temptations, Shadowboxer, Dirty, End Game, Norbit, and now Daddy Day Camp? You get my point.
This film was horrible from beginning to end. While Daddy Day Care actually had a unique selling point (a day care service run by men instead of women), there’s no such thing in Daddy Day Camp. It’s not unusual for camps to be owned and operated by men, so where was the funny premise in this setup? There isn’t one, which is why the movie never gets off the ground.
The script is saddled with so many clichés that every single occurrence was predictable. Moreover, there was zero character development, so I didn’t particularly care what happened to anyone in this film. And for some reason, the whole foreclosure plot, which looked like it was going to be the primary focus of the movie, got pushed to the backburner and turned into a mere afterthought. As a result, there was no sense of urgency in any of the action, which made the film play more as a series of loosely connected scenes rather than a coherent whole.
Overall, Daddy Day Camp is a terrible movie that is not even worth the $3.00 rental fee. Kids will be bored and adults will likely fall asleep, so just save your money. I give this film 2.5 stars out of 10.