Charlie (Murphy) is of course an advertising executive who is, of course, laid off. His wife (Regina King)--so marginalized as to amount to a cameo--goes back to work, leaving Charlie and his best friend Phil (Jeff Garlin) to start a day care centre out of Charlie's house. Because an absentee father getting back in touch with his attention-starved moppet isn't plot enough, enter Ms. Harridan (Anjelica Huston, her character's Dickensian name meaning a shrewish, desiccated old horse), the headmistress of a Dickensian (natch) day care centre who functions as the wholly unnecessary villain of the piece. Somewhere along the way, Steve Zahn comes on board as a Star Trek-obsessed "daddy" who, with an aggregate of about ten minutes of total screen time, is the most well-developed and interesting character in the entire disaster.

Daddy Day Care is the kind of patronizing movie that doesn't think you'll notice that most of Ben's dialogue has been dubbed (or, for that matter, that the talking parrot doesn't move its beak) and that the only potentially funny moments have already been overexposed by the previews. Lots of falling down by the fat guy is mixed with the fat guy getting stung to what must be near-death by a swarm of bees, Eddie getting kicked in the shins and warning of an impending aneurysm, and the kids saying a lot of precocious things while working through their issues (which include the sad tyke who hasn't been potty trained, the sad tyke who wants to be The Flash, and the sad tyke who is smart in a world that loves garbage like Daddy Day Care). The picture is protracted and unforgivable, its denouement essentially an extended harangue about the evils of intellectualism in an anti-intellectual country. Potentially interesting subplots are ignored, the fact that Charlie's little Ben (Khamani Griffin) can't read or write is instantly forgotten when it comes time for Ben to draw a carefully-labelled tribute to he and daddy, and Jonathan Katz's flummoxed child welfare official serves mainly to remind how much I miss "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist".-Walter Chaw