Daddy Day Care

Daddy Day Care is a 2003 American family comedy film starring Eddie Murphy Jeff Garlin, Steve Zahn, Regina King, and Anjelica Huston. Written by Geoff Rodkey and directed by Steve Carr, it marks Murphy and Carr's second collaboration after Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001). The plot follows two fathers who start a child day care out of their home after they are laid off from their corporate jobs.

The film was released in the United States on May 9, 2003, by Columbia Pictures. It received generally negative reviews from critics and grossed $164 million worldwide on a budget of $60 million.

Plot
Charles "Charlie" Hinton (Eddie Murphy) is a health food product marketing executive whose wife Kimberly "Kim" (Regina King) has just gone back to work as a lawyer. They enroll their son Benjamin "Ben" (Khamani Griffin), in Chapman Academy, an expensive and over-academic preschool headed by a woman named Gwenyth Harridan (Anjelica Huston). Soon after, Charlie and his best friend, Phillip "Phil" Ryerson (Jeff Garlin), along with 300 others, are laid off after their boss, Jim Fields (Wallace Langham), shuts down the entire health division due to children not liking healthy breakfast cereal. After over a month of failed attempts to find a new job, Charlie is forced to pull Ben out of Chapman due to its cost and, unable to find a decent-but-more-affordable preschool, decides to open his very own preschool in his home with the help of Phil, calling it Daddy Day Care. At first, the local parents are suspicious of men wanting to work with kids, but as Daddy Day Care is cheaper and more child-based than Chapman, the latter begins to lose students. Daddy Day Care opens and Charlie and Phil each begin taking care of several kids, though things don't go smoothly at first due to the kids having several issues and being prone to causing chaos around the house.

Fearing Daddy Day Care will ruin Chapman, Harridan attempts to shut down Daddy Day Care by notifying child services that Charlie and Phil are not following the relevant regulations. Mr. Dan Kubitz (Jonathan Katz), a director of child services, notifies them of the codes that they need to fix, which Charlie and Phil quickly correct. Mr. Kubitz then informs Phil and Charlie that they need another employee to keep an appropriate ratio of children to caregivers. Luckily, Marvin (Steve Zahn), a nerdy former co-worker, had dropped by and after seeing how good he is at entertaining the children, Phil and Charlie ask him about joining. Marvin is initially unsure but then finds himself falling for Kelli (Leila Arcieri), the single mother of one of the kids in the daycare, Dylan (Felix Achille), and agrees. Daddy Day Care becomes more popular and attracts more children and parents, much to Harridan's dismay. Charlie, Phil, and Marvin each begin enjoying running Daddy Day Care and taking care of the kids while bonding with them and helping them overcome their issues.

Later, Mr. Kubitz tells them they have too many kids for Daddy Day Care to legally continue to operate at Charlie's residence. Charlie is too reluctant to kick any kids out and decides to instead simply move Daddy Day Care to a bigger space. Marvin tells Charlie and Phil about an available building with potential, but they do not have the money to buy it. They hold a fundraising children's festival called "Rock for Daddy Day Care", which Harridan finds out about. No longer able to compete fairly, she and her hesitant assistant, Jenny (Lacey Chabert), infiltrate the festival and sabotage everything by deflating a moon bounce, releasing animals from the petting zoo, replacing face paint with glue, putting cockroaches in the food, and bribing the groundskeeper into turning on the park sprinklers. As a result, Charlie does not even raise close to enough money for the new facility and is forced to close Daddy Day Care. Shortly after, Charlie and Phil are offered their old jobs back for double their old salaries, accepting Harridan's offer to take the kids back to Chapman at exactly Daddy Day Care's cost. Marvin, heartbroken by the closing of the daycare, declines Charlie and Phil's offer to be on board their marketing panel and decides to sell his things.

Back at the advertising agency, Charlie and Phil's first assignment is to market a sugary cereal to children. While listening to a cereal pitch, Charlie realizes the impact Daddy Day Care has had on Ben and the other children and starts to question the morality of his assignment. He quits his job at the advertising agency and convinces Phil to quit with him. He and Phil pick up Marvin after convincing him not to sell his things, before heading off to Chapman. Charlie confronts Harridan, claiming she doesn't care about what children want and that Chapman's child development methods are not proper. Listing examples of how he has helped the children improve, Charlie successfully convinces the children's parents to bring their children back to Daddy Day Care, making it a raging success and earning it the new facility, forcing Chapman into bankruptcy. Six months later, Marvin begins a relationship with Kelli, Harridan is demoted to a crossing guard, and Jenny defects to a new job at Daddy Day Care. The film ends as Harridan is ambushed by a swarm of bees (due to a flower Crispin gave her that she put onto her vest), and tries to shoo them away by waving her stop sign at them, accidentally causing a traffic jam around her in the process.

Cast

 * Eddie Murphy as Charles "Charlie" Hinton
 * Jeff Garlin as Phillip "Phil" Ryerson
 * Steve Zahn as Marvin
 * Regina King as Kimberly "Kim" Hinton
 * Anjelica Huston as Miss Gwyneth Harridan
 * Khamani Griffin as Benjamin "Ben" Hinton
 * Kevin Nealon as Bruce
 * Jonathan Katz as Daniel "Dan" Kubitz
 * Lacey Chabert as Jenny
 * Max Burkholder as Maxwell "Max" Ryerson
 * Jimmy Bennett as Flash/Tony
 * Leila Arcieri as Kelli
 * Shane Baumel as Crispin
 * Elle Fanning as Jamie
 * Felix Achille as Dylan
 * Hailey Noelle Johnson as Becca
 * Siobhan Fallon Hogan as Peggy
 * Arthur Young as Nicky
 * Wallace Langham as Jim Fields
 * Lisa Edelstein as Bruce's wife/Crispin's mother
 * Mark Griffin as Steve
 * Laura Kightlinger as Sheila

Cheap Trick appear as themselves at the Rock for Daddy Day Care charity event.

Production
In April 2002, The Hollywood Reporter reported Eddie Murphy was to reteam with Steve Carr, who directed Dr. Dolittle 2, in Daddy Day Care. In June 2002, Anjelica Huston was in negotiations to star in the film. The following month, Revolution Studios set Jeff Garlin, as well as Steve Zahn, to join Murphy in the film.

The movie was filmed on location in and around Los Angeles, California. Production was started on August 5, 2002, and wrapped on November 22, 2002. In December 2002, the film's poster was officially released, with the tagline: D-Day is coming.

Critical reception
On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 27% based on 130 reviews, with an average rating of 4.51/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Daddy Day Care does its job of babysitting the tots. Anyone older will probably be bored." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 39 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.

Box office
Despite the negative critical ratings, the film was a box office success, grossing over $160 million worldwide based on a $60 million budget. The film was released in the United Kingdom on July 11, 2003, and opened on #3, behind Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Bruce Almighty. The next two weekends, the film moved down one place, before finally ending up on #10 on August 3, 2003.

Sequel
In August 2003, soon after the release of Daddy Day Care, Murphy was lured into making a sequel movie, although he hadn't signed up for the film.

A sequel was released on August 8, 2007, titled Daddy Day Camp, with Cuba Gooding, Jr. replacing Eddie Murphy's role as Charlie Hinton. The film itself was panned by critics and audiences alike with a 1% on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2007, the film won the Razzie Award for "Worst Prequel or Sequel".