DADDY DAY CARE Rating: (out of 5 stars) Director: Steve Carr Producers: Matt Berenson, John Davis, Wyck Godfrey Writer: Geoff Rodkey Director of Photography: Steven B. Poster Cast: Eddie Murphy, Jeff Garlin, Anjelica Huston View the IMDB page for full cast and crew

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Review by: Dan Tester
5/12/03

I really feel sorry for kids these days. Actually, I feel sorry for the movie going public in general, but kids are really the ones that are the most abused. I mean, save for some thoughtful and entertaining cartoons from Disney and the like, movies for kids just don't seem to have any heart anymore. It just seems that movies were different when I was a kid. Movies like The Bad News Bears, Star Wars, hell even Caveman with Ringo Starr, had certain endearing qualities to them that are completely lacking today. I know it is all about the money, and kids today don't really know any better, so they are just given heartless, lifeless, mass-produced garbage like Daddy Day Care and forced to settle for less. Even the blockbusters like Harry Potter just seem to lack the kind of wonder that movies had when I was a kid. The special effects have replaced the sincerity. Anyway, Daddy Day Care is a completely worthless waste of time. It is fascinating to me that the kids in the theater seemed equally as bored. About a half hour or so in, there were so many apathetic kids crying and screaming and running around the theater I thought the movie has actually spilled into my own reality. So I came up with a brilliant idea. I have a neighbor, who is a mentally challenged 35-year-old aspiring film critic. When he was 13, he was hit in the head by a softball and was rendered mentally deficient. There are many days in which I gaze off my balcony and see him, for no reason at all, beating his head against a cement wall, or chasing his shadow around, or listening to a Justin Timberlake CD, and I feel sad. In our complex, we all call him "the kid," even though he is older than all of us. So I decided that his childlike mentality is perfect for Eddie Murphy's latest, so why not give the guy a break. So without further ado, I introduce you to Peabo O'Reilly, the first mentally challenged movie reviewer (if you don't count Michael Medved)…Peabo?

"Hello from Hollywood, this is Peabo O'Reilly with a movie review!! HA HA HA HA HA!! I feel just like Leonard Malted. Daddy Day Care is the funniest movie that was ever, ever made. It is even better than Charlie's Angels!! It stars a black guy who gets fired from his job, and him and this fat guy take care of kids all day. I sure wish I had a black guy like this, because he is very funny, and makes funny sounds and funny faces and is just really, really funny. I remember one time I was watching the HBO, and that same black guy was in another movie, and it was really, really funny. He pretended to be a cop who made fun of white people, but then he started to say the bad poopy language, and my Mommy made me turn it off. She said that the black guy used to be a very popular adult funny guy, and used to use a lot of bad poopy language, and it is not good for boys like me to hear that things. But then she said one time he was found in his car with a man dressed up like a lady, and then he started making funny movies with no poopy language for kids, and now he is the funny man again. I remember one time I saw my Uncle Sy wearing a lady's dress and shoes and dancing around his bedroom, but Mommy told me he is just a silly man and don't tell anyone. Now I don't see Uncle Sy anymore. But that is fine with me!!

So this movie is SO funny. The black guy and the fat guy have all kinds of crazy adventures, and don't really know how to take care of kids. I wish I had a black guy like that. I could do whatever I wanted, and then it would be fun. That fat guy is really, really funny. But my Mommy told me it is not nice to make fun of fat people. I remember one time I was in Wal-Mart and there was a big fat lady eating potato chips right out of the bag right in that store before she even bought it. I pointed at her and told my Mommy "hey look at the big fat lady eating those chips right in the store!" and my Mommy yelled at me and said it is not nice to make fun of fat people and their eating distorters. But I still only laughed and laughed at the funny fat man in the movie. My Mommy was laughing too, especially when that fat man got stung by the bees, or when he got kicked in his butt by a girl on a swing, and especially when he got kicked in the private naughtsy area by a little kid and rolled around on the ground in great pain. My Uncle Sy used to call that naughtsy area "Ground Zero of Love," but then after some airplanes crashed into a building, he said it was politically inconnect to call it that anymore. Then he just called it his "Kidney Disturber." Uncle Sy was always drinking beer, and his breath smelled funny a lot. I asked my Mommy why it was okay to laugh at that funny fat man in the movie, but not that funny fat lady at the store eating those potato chips, and she just didn't say anything. She just gave me a Twinkie and ran out of my bedroom. But that was fine with me!!

Morticia Adams is in this movie too. She plays a mean lady who wants to run the black guy and the fat guy out of their day care house. I don't like her, because she is mean, but she gets stung by bees too and that was really, really funny. There is also a really, really funny Star Trek guy who talks like Star Trek and knows how to play with kids. He was really, really funny, and he was my favorite character in the movie. Even better than that black guy, and that fat guy was definitely the funniest!! Those crazy kids have so much fun, I wish I was one of them! The black guy has a son who is black, and the fat guy is white, and his son is white, and all of the other kids are white. I thought if the black guy was the star, there might be more other colors of kids in that movie, but Mommy says it is white people who mostly pay to see the black guy nowadays, so they have to show those colors more. I don't understand all of these things in the movies, but I sure do like Twinkies.

I would give this movie 46 stars. I don't know how to do stars, but Dan told me just to say whatever I thought, and I sure want to see that movie again. I am so excited to do this, I can't wait to review that movie called Radio starring the black guy from Jerry Maguire who plays a guy like me. I saw that preview before Daddy Day Care, and it looks really, really funny. I don't know if he got hit in the head with a softball like me, but he has really big teeth and pushes around a shopping cart and then a man on the football team asks him if he wants to be a tackling dummy for them, and he says yes. I want to review this movie too. WHEEEEEEEW!! YEAAAAAAAHHHH. I AM A MOVIE REVIEWING GUY NOW. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…."

Sorry, this is Dan back with you. Apparently Peabo had one too many Twinkies today, and the sugar has kicked in. He is currently banging his head repeatedly against my apartment wall and singing the theme song to Laverne and Shirley. I know as a responsible adult I should stop him, but as I reflect upon Daddy Day Care, and the current state of film in our world, I think I am just going to join him instead.

But as always, it is only two men's opinions.

(A Sony Pictures release. Opened in wide release on May 9, 2003.)