Daddy Day Care (2003) review – Fun family night, not quite a classic

🎬 A rewatch that did not quite match the memory

Some family comedies get funnier every time you see them. Daddy Day Care is not one of them. We watched it together as a family, and we all had it down as funnier than it turned out to be. It kept us entertained and it had its laughs. But it was not as funny as we had it in our heads, and in places it is just too silly and over the top.

That still adds up to a decent family evening. It is rated PG, it is short at 92 minutes, and the premise (two laid-off dads open a day care in their living room) is exactly the kind of thing kids find funny and parents recognise. It just does not belong on the top shelf next to the dad-comedy classics. Our score is 3.5 out of 5.

The setup: two ad men and a living room full of preschoolers

Eddie Murphy plays Charlie Hinton, a food-company advertising executive whose big project is a vegetable breakfast cereal called Veggie-O’s. It flops, and Charlie and his colleague Phil, played by Jeff Garlin, are let go. Charlie’s wife Kim (Regina King) goes back to work, their son is pulled out of the expensive Chapman Academy preschool, and Charlie has a lot of time on his hands.

So he and Phil do the obvious thing for two men with no childcare experience: they open a day care. It runs out of Charlie’s house, it is cheaper than the competition, and it takes off. That puts them in the sights of Miss Harridan, the formidable head of Chapman Academy played by Anjelica Huston, who sends child services after them and does everything she can to shut them down. Steve Zahn joins as Marvin, a former colleague and devoted Star Trek fan, who turns out to get along with the kids better than anyone.

It is a simple story, and it knows it. The fun is meant to come from watching grown men lose every argument with a four-year-old.

Eddie Murphy’s family-film years

Daddy Day Care sits right in the middle of the stretch when Eddie Murphy became a family-film star. Dr. Dolittle came out in 1998, Shrek made him the voice of Donkey in 2001, and Dr. Dolittle 2 followed the same year, directed by Steve Carr, who then made Daddy Day Care with him. Later in 2003 Murphy also headlined Disney’s The Haunted Mansion.

It was a hit with audiences: about $104 million at the US box office alone and $164 million worldwide, against a $60 million budget. That is worth knowing, because it explains why the film is remembered so fondly by families who saw it back then, and why so many of us carry around a funnier version of it in our heads than the one on the screen.

Where it works

Eddie Murphy carries the film, and the laughs it has mostly come from him: a grown-up who keeps realising, a moment too late, that the toddlers are winning. Jeff Garlin and Steve Zahn round out a likeable trio of dads in over their heads.

The kids are the other half of it, from the boy who refuses to take off his Flash costume to the general chaos of a dozen small children in one house. For a family audience it is also refreshingly clean: rude humor, yes, but nothing that makes a parent reach for the remote.

Where it falls short

The problem is the dial. Too often, the film turns the silliness up past the point where it is funny. Scenes that should be a quick gag get stretched, the slapstick gets broader and broader, and the rival day care plot with Anjelica Huston is played so far over the top that it stops feeling like a real problem for the characters.

That is also the difference to the classics it gets compared with. In The Pacifier and The Game Plan (we looked at both in our Playdate review), the jokes come from a tough guy being genuinely out of his depth, and there is a real emotional story underneath. Daddy Day Care gets there briefly at the end, but it spends most of its time on gags. That is why it ends up a notch below them for us.

Critics at the time were harsher still: the film sits at 28 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. We are kinder than that, because it did what a family comedy needs to do on a movie night, which is keep everyone on the sofa entertained.

Watching it with the kids

Daddy Day Care is rated PG for mild rude humor, and it is about as safe a pick as family films get. There is no real peril, no scary scenes, and the jokes are pitched at the level of younger school kids: potty humor, pratfalls and grown-ups getting outsmarted. Teenagers may find the silliness a bit much; the humor is aimed squarely at younger kids.

There is a sequel, Daddy Day Camp from 2007, with Cuba Gooding Jr. taking over the lead. If the family loved the first one, it exists; but if the first one already felt too silly, we would not go looking for more of the same. A better follow-up is The Family Plan, which we rate 4.5 out of 5 and which gets the dad-comedy balance of jokes and heart much more right.

Building a dad-comedy movie night

If you want to make an evening of it, Daddy Day Care works best as the lighter half of a double feature. Pair it with The Pacifier or The Game Plan, put the stronger film second, and the evening ends on a high.

For more recent picks in the same spirit, The Family Plan is the one we would start with at 4.5 out of 5, and The Family Plan 2 keeps it going at a 4. Playdate shows the same risk Daddy Day Care runs into: a great cast and some laughs, but too much chaos, which is why it lands at 3 out of 5 with us.

Where to watch it

In the US, Daddy Day Care streams on Netflix, and with a library card it is free on Kanopy and Hoopla. It can also be rented or bought digitally from the usual stores, and the DVD is cheap, which makes it an easy one to keep around for sick days and rainy weekends.

❓ FAQ

Is Daddy Day Care a good family movie?

Yes, with expectations set right. It is rated PG, it has plenty of laughs and it kept our family entertained, but it is sillier and less funny than we remembered. We rate it 3.5 out of 5.

Is Daddy Day Care better than The Pacifier or The Game Plan?

No. For us both of those are the better dad comedies. Daddy Day Care leans harder on slapstick and gets too over the top in places, while The Pacifier and The Game Plan balance the jokes with more heart.

Where can I watch Daddy Day Care?

In the US it streams on Netflix and free with a library card on Kanopy and Hoopla. It can also be rented or bought digitally and on DVD.

What age is Daddy Day Care suitable for?

It is rated PG for mild rude humor. The slapstick and potty jokes play well with younger school-age kids, and there is nothing in it that should worry parents.

Is there a sequel to Daddy Day Care?

Yes, Daddy Day Camp (2007), with Cuba Gooding Jr. replacing Eddie Murphy in the lead role.