Ah, Poo, It's Hard To Hate This Kid Flick

Newcastle Herald

Monday December 3, 2007

By TY BURR The New York Times

DADDY DAY CAMP (PG)

Director: Fred Savage

Stars: Cuba Gooding jnr, Lochlyn Munro, Paul Rae, Richard Gant, Spencir Bridges

Screening: Showcase, Glendale, Maitland, Tuggerah, Erina

Rating: **

THEY'VE drafted the B team for Daddy Day Camp, a belated sequel to the rambunctious 2003 family comedy Daddy Day Care.

Now standing in for the original film's Eddie Murphy is Cuba Gooding jnr, who sinks lower with each new movie yet never stops smiling. In place of Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star Jeff Garlin as the hero's corpulent buddy is generic big guy Paul Rae; substituting for Regina King as the hero's beleaguered wife is Tamala Jones.

All the poo jokes are back, though. Broad, good-natured, and obsessed with everything in the human body that must come out, Daddy Day Camp is innocuous amusement for five- to eight-year-olds and other people stuck in the anal stage of development.

Gooding's Charlie Hinton and Rae's Phil Ryerson have been so successful in their day-care business that they decide to expand the brand, buying the summer camp they attended as kids. The place is a wreck, the bank's ready to foreclose, and the smug owner of richie-rich Camp Canola next door wants to buy out Camp Driftwood. There's a "methane problem" in the outhouse, too, and I think it leaked onto the script.

The five screenwriters give Charlie and Phil the standard mixed bag of campers: the Thug, the Nerd, the Know-It-All and the Kid Who Pukes on Everything. All of them talk like miniature 40-year-olds and each has one big problem that will be solved by the time the credits roll.

Not that kiddie audiences will care when they've got flatulence, projectile vomiting, and pee-filled water balloons to keep them occupied.

Daddy Day Camp knows that gross-out gags are a staple of school-holiday comedy, and it doesn't care what mum and dad think.

If the movie is relentless low-brow swill, its splattery good cheer makes it hard to hate.

Just go in expecting the expected, and maybe bring a tarp.

The New York Times

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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