With Eddie Murphy you never really know if you're going to get PLUTO NASH or AXEL FOLEY. His movies are so hit and miss that you have to just about take a gamble. However one emerging trend with his career are that family oriented films tend to work for him. With films like The Nutty Professor and Shrek, Murphy has established himself as the successor to Bill Cosby for African American parental comdey. His newest film Daddy Day Care bowed to a number one box office and reeled in more than 100 Million at the Box Office.
Eddie plays Charlie Hinton, leader of a team or marketing wizzes trying to find out what children really like in a cereal. His best friend and co-worker is Phil (Jeff Garlin of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), who both are in charge of trying to market a line of Vegetable related cereal featuring Broccoli and Carrot characters. Of course it doesn't work and they along with 300 other people find themselves out of a job when the whole health concious division of children's cereal is shutdown.
Like many fathers both of them have children and when neither can find new jobs during the recession their respective wives head out of the house to bring home the bread. As Charlie and Phil soon learn, there's a monopoly on childcare in their suburb and they get the idea to open a daycare in Charlie's house.
The basic premise of the movie is the hilarity that ensues once Charlie and Phil attempt to run a successful daycare. The monopoly is run by Anjelica Huston who makes a perfect looking uptight witch. Her form of daycare is EXPENSIVE and focuses on treating the kids like adults rather than going for fun.
The movie is family friendly and kids and parents alike will breathe a sigh of relief as they can watch together with each generation getting plenty of laughs. This isn't Murphy's best movie, not by a longshot, but the ensemble cast of kids and a stunningly perfect portrayal of finding ones purpose by Steve Zahn as the third "Daddy" makes this film worth watching.
The Disc:
As one of Columbia's Special Edition's the disc presents both a 1.85:1 widescreen anamorphic presentation as well as the standard 1:33:1 Full Screen edition. Of course we based all of our viewpoints on the widescreen version which is pretty much the standard of what we see these days. Columbia and the other studios are getting to be so good with these transfers that there's little left to say about them.
Sounds on the disc are equally standard with the kind of quality in surround you really would expect from a comedy. The movie's actions just don't dictate themselves well for a surround setup so don't expect much here except for clarity in the voices.
Extras on the disc are really nice beginning with a superb Computer Generated Short Film Called Early Bloomers. Done with the kind of quality of a feature along the same veins as Ice Age or Shrek, Early Bloomers is about tadpoles and how they react when one of them grows legs way ahead of the others. I enjoyed this short immensely.
Although there's no audio commentary track, there are Three Features With The Kids As Hosts. Each of these is cute and represents a different angle such as "What's it like to work with Eddie Murphy?" or "Who are these kids anyways?". I watched through each of them and they are definitely adorable. Only makes me want some of my own even more.
Next up is the Blooper Reel that is presented during the rolling ending credits. With children on a set you're bound to capture some hillarious outtakes and boy do we. You can tell how much fun Eddie had with these kids here. Up next are some Games which are totally aimed at the youngest set. While nothing here is really exciting for adults, it's bound to keep the kids busy for at least a little bit. Finally there's the usual trailers of which most are older films.
bottom line:
An enjoyable film that proved to me why it was so successful back in the heated May races. Eddie Murphy should just stick to family oriented films and avoid all other scripts. Like Mr. Mom before it, it shows that us guys can take care of kids too!
4 out of 5
By - Brian Gray
