Daddy Day Camp (2007)

good back-story, and good acting

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

this movie isn't near as bad as most of the reviewers on here claim it to be,, I don't honestly know what their expectations were, but they must have been pretty darn high,, they must have been expecting it to be as good as the first one,,, wrong,, course it's inferior to the first one I figured it would be. Cuba Gooding Jr. however will have you rolling on the floor with laughter,, which is exactly what I was looking for when I bought this movie,, lot's of mayhem and practical jokes about in this movie. sure it's not gonna win any awards,, but then again it doesn't stink up the joint either,, good comedic relief if you ask me.

Charlie (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and Phil (Paul Rae) have been running their successful Daddy DayCare for several years now. However, summer vacation starts and the kid care guys are ready for a break. Not so fast! Charlie's wife thinks it would be good for their now elementary ages son to go to day CAMP. This horrifies Charlie, who hates bugs, snakes and competitive sports. But, when he finally agrees, there is no other camp choice but the one he, Charlie, went to, Driftwood. Driving out to the woods, though, with his son and Phil, they are astonished by a couple of things. First, there is a flashy day camp just next to Driftwood, run by an medal-winning and obnoxious Olympic athlete (Lochlyn Munro). Secondly, Driftwood is about to go under from the competition and is extremely rundown. Guess who steps in to turn it around, Charlie and Phil, that's who. Good at promotion, they snag a bus load of kids for their first week. But, after exposing the kids to poison ivy, wet boots, getting lost among the trees, etc., they lose a good deal of the children to the nearby "super" camp. Not wanting to be defeated, Charlie calls on his retired Marine-father colonel, Buck (Richard Gant). to help save the day, even though they have crossed horns many times. Eventually, the wangle more kids AND a day of competition with their foes next door. Who will win? Viewers may think they are traveling down Deja Vu lane, which is true, but the movie still hits the funnybone. The cast is one big reason, for Gooding, Jr., Paul, Munroe, Gant and the rest enthusiastically play out the slapstick script. All other film aspects, that is, costumes, sets, script and direction are worthy as well. Think this is one to skip? Not so, its fun!

The predecessor was immature and not absolutely hilarious, and I assumed this sequel was straight to DVD, and even though that was wrong, the fact that it was rubbish wasn't. Basically the story continues where the last film left off, where Charlie Hinton (Razzie nominated Cuba Gooding Jr., replacing Eddie Murphy) and his partner Phil Ryerson (Paul Rae) have made Daddy Day Care a big success. This time they plan to extend the business more by buying a run-down camp site, Camp Driftwood, to go against and hopefully beat the highly successful Camp Catona run by the mean Lance Warner (Scary Movie's Lochlyn Munro). They start very badly having to clear up the mess left behind, and when some kids do come to the camp hoping for a good time, they lose about half their customers. They do manage to keep a few of the kids going, including of course Charlie's own son Ben (Spencir Bridges) supporting him, despite facing foreclosure and needing money for repairs. Obviously keeping the remaining kids under control is much harder than it would be in a house, being outdoors, so they get the help of Charlie's own father Colonel Buck (Bean's Richard Gant). The kids really work together to have fun and make the camp much more appealing to other people, but Lance is insisting that his camp is better. It is revealed that Charlie was in a camp tournament during his childhood, and this was one of the reasons he started the whole camp thing, to prove himself almost. Eventually, after so much aggravation and disaster, Charlie decides to take Lance up on his offer, or rather his torment, and accepts Camp Driftwood to go against Camp Catona in the Camp Olympiad. After a few cheats by Camp Catona, the good guys do catch up, and eventually it is revealed the rivals were cheating, and the right people do win, and many parents are glad to be signing up to Camp Driftwood for their kids. Also starring Tamala Jones as Kim Hinton, Brian Doyle-Murray as Uncle Morty and Joshua 'Josh' McLerran as Dale. I agree with the critics that it is horrible to see a once Oscar winning actor wasting his time with stupid films like this, it is not funny, it is predictable, it is irritating, and I don't think anyone older than three years old will like it, a really awful family comedy. It won the Razzie Award Worst Prequel or Sequel, and it was nominated for Worst Director for Fred Savage (Austin Powers in Goldmember's Number Three, with the big mole), Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay. Poor!

One day, I would really like to see an interview with Cuba Gooding Jr. as to why he accepted one crappy movie project after another after getting an Oscar, eventually finding himself only able to get work in direct-to-DVD projects - or movies originally intended to go direct-to-DVD, as this project was. His performance here isn't exactly one that suggests he cares about how he comes across - he is constantly mugging and overacting, and it's hard to care for his character or for Gooding himself. It's also hard to care about anything else in this movie. The bad guys are cartoon characters, and the white partner of Gooding's character is given almost nothing to do. As for the rest of the protagonists, they are a group of people you will hope will fail, mainly because the kids are obnoxious stereotypes. Throw in some gross literate potty humor, as well as the production values of a television drama, and you get what you think you'll get just by seeing the front of the movie's DVD case.