Many parents today are enrolling their toddlers in preschool programs designed to insure them a good life on the fast track, which translates as the best education from pre-school to graduate school, the right profession with a good position, the most influence in their community, and, of course, a top income bracket. We are probably only a decade or so away from a time when, due to the promised marvels of genetic engineering, wealthy Americans will be able to order up designer babies with turbocharged IQs. Keep all of this in mind as you are enjoying the family comedy Daddy Day Care, which revolves around what some parents are willing to pay out and put up with in order to make their children competitive for the dog-eat-dog exigencies of the real world.

Charlie (Eddie Murphy) and Phil (Jeff Garlin) are top-dollar ad executives in a West Coast firm. They spend all of their energies on inane projects, such as designing a campaign for vegetable cereal. By the time they get home, they have little left to give to their children. Then, much to their surprise, their agency downsizes, and they find themselves unemployed.

While looking for a childcare center for his four-year old son, Ben (Khamani Griffin), Charlie and his wife Kim (Regina King) find that the only reputable choice in their affluent suburb is the pricey Chapman Academy run by the elitist and tyrannical Gwyneth Harridan (Anjelica Huston). Children there are treated like little adults, given multiple language skills, and exposed to other educational strategies intended to program them for success.

Charlie and Phil come up with the idea of starting their own operation; they call it Daddy Day Care. While Kim goes off to work as a lawyer, Charlie uses their home for the new business. Of course, the two men are out of their league trying to handle the little ones. Luckily, they enlist the help of Marvin (Steve Zahn), one of those men who connects easily with kids because he's never grown up himself. Soon, this happy-go-lucky childcare operation is drawing kids away from Chapman Academy. This angers Gwyneth who sends over a Child Services inspector (Jonathan Katz) in hopes of shutting them down with violations. When that doesn't work she tries other more dastardly measures.

The comic proceedings in this film directed by Steve Carr are on the kindergarten level, and that's okay given the storyline. Perhaps the most interesting dimension of Daddy Day Care is the theme of two self-absorbed men who are forced to come to terms with their nurturing instincts. The satirical jabs at the Chapman Academy are in order give their assembly-line approach to engineering children to be winners in the marketplace.


Screened at Loews 34th Street, New York
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