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Daddy Day Camp
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A few years after the events of "Daddy Day Care," the two entrepreneurial fathers (now played by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Paul Rae) buy a run-down summer camp and take up a rivalry with the big, mean bully camp next door. Director Fred Savage, the former child star now making his feature-film debut, runs through the checklist of crass jokes and heavy-handed messages about life and teamwork that would have been a lot more resonant if they had been grounded in reality. A few instances of crass language, some children's brawls, bathroom humor, light cartoonlike violence and an offhand sexual remark. A-II -- adults and adolescents. (PG) 2007
"Daddy Day Camp" (TriStar), the sequel to the 2003 hit "Daddy Day Care," substitutes Cuba Gooding Jr. and Paul Rae in the lead roles originally played by Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garlin, respectively.
As uninspired as it is diluted, "Daddy Day Camp" isn't appreciably worse than its sometimes entertaining progenitor, which, though buoyed by Eddie Murphy's star power, had a surfeit of toilet-training and diaper jokes.
A few years after the events of "Daddy Day Care," in which fired advertising guys Charlie Hinton (Murphy) and Phil Ryerson (Garlin) successfully reinvented themselves as child-care entrepreneurs, the two friends -- now played by Gooding and Rae, mimicking John Goodman -- expand their brand with a woodsy summer day camp. Why all their existing clients suddenly don't need day care any more now that summer's here, when the opposite should be true, is just one of this sequel's lame lapses in logic -- the two run a day-care facility, after all, not a preschool.
Charlie's own childhood experience at camp had traumatized him and helped to alienate him from his father, Marine Corps Col. Buck Hinton (Richard Gant). Yet Charlie and Phil are so inexplicably overflowing with love and nostalgia for Camp Driftwood that they buy the place from its longtime owner, Uncle Morty (Brian Doyle-Murray), even though it's dilapidated and has multiple bank liens against it. And, incidentally, they hate the outdoors and have no idea how to run a camp.
But Charlie's childhood rival, Lance Warner (Lochlyn Munro), owns the hoity-toity camp next door, which offers such luxuries as all-terrain vehicles, paintball and working toilets, so Charlie's going to take up the challenge.
Director Fred Savage, the former child star of TV's "The Wonder Years" and now a prolific director of children's shows who is making his feature-film debut, runs through the checklist of vulgar jokes, pedestrian slapstick, and heavy-handed messages about life and teamwork that would have been a lot more resonant had the movie borne any relation to reality.
We're not even talking about the methane-gas explosion that blows up an outhouse with dynamitelike force, yet only singes and briefly dazes occupant Phil. We mean its emotional and psychological unreality about competition. Plucky underdogs need much more than team spirit to compete with better equipped, better prepared and deeper-benched opponents. They need serious training, they need a ringer, and they need to be prepared to lose gracefully and still keep their spirits up in the face of adversity. That's for serious character-building.
The film contains a few instances of crass language, some children's brawls, bathroom humor, light cartoonlike violence and an offhand sexual remark. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG -- parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
Movies have been evaluated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishop's Office for Film and Broadcasting according to artistic
merit and moral suitability. The reviews include the USCCB rating,
the Motion Picture Association of America rating, and a brief
synopsis of the movie.
The classifications are as follows:
- A-I -- general patronage;
- A-II -- adults and adolescents;
- A-III -- adults;
- A-IV**
- L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
- O -- morally offensive.
** Discontinued classification. All archived movies that were originally in the A-IV category are now classified as L.
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