Daddy Day Camp Review

By Mitchell Dean

I think that while my eight-year-old was away at camp, she made a movie during arts& crafts time instead of the usual ash tray kids create for their parents. That movie could be called Daddy Day Camp. The truth is that she would have actually made a better film then this one turned out to be.

What do you do when you have a bad movie? Make a sequel of course and hope that it is better than the first! This is the type of move that makes you scratch your head and scream at the studio heads, “What in the world are you thinking!”
Eddie Murphy is MIA, but taking his place as Charlie Hinton is Academy Award winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr. The problem with having Gooding in the film is that he has not generated a great performance since winning the Oscar.

Back in 2003, Hinton lost his job and opened a day care center in order to keep a roof over his family’s head. Now we find that the Daddy Day Care brand name is a huge success, but with summer around the corner, the shift is on Day Camp. Hinton does not want to send his son to camp due to the hurtful experiences he had there as a kid. So to make sure that doesn’t happen he, along with partner Phil (Paul Rae) decide to buy the old day camp they went to as children. This sparks an old rivalry with opposing camp owner and childhood adversary, Lance Warner (Lochlyn Munro).

Every single gag and joke which struggles for a laugh has been seen and done, sometimes more than once, in other films. Remember Meatballs, the classic film with Bill Murray as the camp counselor that led the charge for misunderstood campers everywhere. Well there is none of that greatness here. Gooding mugs his way through the whole way, making it hard to keep from laughing at how horribly wrong this movie went. Like a science project gone bad, it becomes a poor, badly scripted disaster. Bodily functions erupt! Vomiting is crucial! Bed-wetting is essential and the exploding outhouse is the biggest element, looking for the biggest laughs. That is what audiences get, aside of course for the sappy father-son moments between Gooding and his father (Richard Gant) and Gooding and his son (Spencir Bridges).

Fred Savage, the lovable kid from the Wonder Years, directs this feature without a hint of style or personal charm. Seeing as how he has been directing Disney and Nickelodeon shows for the better part of the last seven years, it almost feels as though making this film was just another step for Savage to pay his dues and graduate from directing television to features. I only hope that he will develop some type of directing style before he moves onto anything larger and more profound than this current celluloid drivel.

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