Punishment Movie Review: Daddy Day Camp

 Well, I've seen Daddy Day Care because I suck at podcast competition, so it makes sense that I would see it's wonderful sequel for the same reason.  Daddy Day Camp is... sigh.  It's not good.  It's not fun.  It's not what I want to do with my spare time, but such is my fate.

The sequel has Cuba Gooding Jr playing Charlie Hinton (previously played by Eddie Murphy) and Paul Rae as Phil (previously played by Jeff Garlin).  Holy smokes, Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garlin in a film together?  That must have been hilarious!  It wasn't.  It was not funny at all, and here Gooding Jr and Rae are even less funny.

The premise is that Charlie and Phil's day care is awesome and that they need to help rescue their old camp, which is run by Brian Doyle Murray, who is sadly barely in the film at all.  Of course, there is a competing camp that are all jerks and they need to be fended off because we all know that summer camps are either good or evil.

If this movie hadn't fried both my brain and my integrity, I would know where to start with this review.  Instead, I am beaten down, destroyed, and wanting to shame eat all chocolate within a three kilometre radius.

Paul Rae is the source of more fart jokes than one can swallow, not that I'm advocating the ingestion of fart jokes in any amount, even for therapeutic reasons.  You may remember Rae from his role of 'John the drunk customer' in Solar Destruction or perhaps as 'dark figure' in episode one of season seven of the television show True Blood.  He is best known as 'Megan's date' in the 2010 short film by Roy Rex, L.A. Vampire.  I haven't seen any of those, so Rae's work is new territory for me, and I can say nobody sells a fart like Paul Rae.

The antagonist of the film is Lance, played by Lochlyn Munro, who I know well from two of the worst movies of last year, Apex and Cosmic Sin.  If there is a positive to highlight in Daddy Day Camp is that Munro goes all in on a cartoony performance.  He's giving it his all, but the script is bland and without joy.  His character is annoying, but at least there is an abundance of effort from Munro for us to hate him.

If I was a gambling addict and lost all of my fingers to loan sharks, I could still use my hands to count each time I laughed in Daddy Day Camp.  Poop jokes, fart jokes, urine jokes, and everything else in here all dwell in the sad realm of the comedy spectrum.  There may be a few kids out there who find this hilarious, but parents need to know that they should use an oyster shucker to shuck their own eyeballs whilst the movie is playing.

For those who are thinking, 'well, this is just a family movie so why are you being so harsh?'  The truth is that any genre of film can be great and deserves effort.  Some of my favourite movies of all time are family films.  Just because something is being made for kids doesn't mean it shouldn't strive to be good.  In the last five years, two of my number one films of the year have been family films.  Kids don't deserve a lower standard than anyone else out there.

There.  This may just barely qualify as a review, but it's all the effort I'm going to give it.  I've held up my end of my disgrace and watched this film.  I love young Everett Spicer.  He is a great kid, full of happiness and joy.  By choosing Daddy Day Camp for me to watch, it is clear he can also be a little devious.  Well played, Everett.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars