Daddy Day Camp

Daddy Day Camp

Cuba Gooding Jr., Paul Rae

If you want to know who your friends really are, have a bad back. Let me explain. I have a spine that I have to treat rather gingerly. The root of the damage probably goes back to high school sports. Add to this legacy, the fact that almost everyone I know has a story of me doing some feat of stupidity that has left my spine resembling a question mark. Yet, I have been doing yoga and my back has not felt better in years, until this winter when we had that big snowstorm come through with 5 to 7 inches of heavy snow, the kind of snow that strains every muscle to move. Now, because of the strange location of where I lived, snow plows pushed the white stuff from about a four block radius into my side yard. At just the moment I finish cleaning off the sidewalk, along comes another truck, burying all the good work that I had just done. Like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill, keeping the cement clean was a never ending battle. After about six hours, I headed over to my parents' house to enjoy a little HBO (as I am too cheap to purchase cable, and they were wintering in Arizona, which meant I could watch the evening’s entertainment in peace and more importantly raid their icebox.) As the night wore on, after popping a little aspirin, I thought about using their hot tub, but such a body of water seems to be a bubbling petri dish of bubonic plague, flesh eating viruses, and skin diseases. I decided I would use their bathtub instead, as my back was feeling a little tight. I thought the warm water and jets would help the muscles relax. It was Woodstock all over again as I sank into the tub. The soothing jets, the warm water, it was decadent, and I drifted off. I don’t know how long I had been asleep; maybe it was ten minutes, maybe an hour, maybe two. When I woke my back had locked up and I could not move. Unbelievable pain. Panic. I was basically a big chunk of ham floating in a pot, and I did not have any pants on. As I lay there, I also realized that waiting at home for me was my dog, whose bladder was getting as big as Karl Rove’s ego. Resting on the edge of the tub, next to my towel was my lifeline, my brand new cell phone. I could almost hear the angels sing as I looked at it. One little problem, who do I call? Let me remind you, I am naked. This is one of those moments where you realize who your friends are and the list gets really small, very quickly. All females were out. I had been in the tub for possibly several hours and did not need the whispers and giggles I would get for the next few months at the local grocery store, because women don’t understand shrinkage. I thought about my brothers, one of whom was only a few blocks away. He was out, because at family get-togethers, when I tried to hug him, he would ask me if I was gay. There was my brother in Roland, but I figured the odds were 50/50 that he would show up, put on a pair of latex gloves, and gently push my head under the water. A few months later when my parents discovered the big bowl of soup in their tub, he would look at them surprised and wonder aloud why I had not called him. There was an ex-girlfriend in Ames – I knew she would come - but death would be better than to hear all the reasons that I was a self-centered jerk. Male friends? My mind was filled with thoughts. At the exact moment a male friend puts his arms around me to pull me out, my parent’s neighbors would run over to see what was happening. Not in this lifetime. It would be a lifetime of wearing a dress and calling myself Lola. There were the first responders but a photo montage of little Trevor and the twins on the fire department bulletin board was not going to be in the cards for this camper. Finally it occurred to me. I used my toes to pop the drain cap, drained the lukewarm water, closed the drain, re-filled the tub again with warm water, which allowed my back to soften up. Then I was able, with all my effort, to pull myself out.

I was reminded of being stuck in that tub as I watched Daddy Day Camp. This movie made me long for the pleasure of being in that tub. If any actor needs to fire his agent, it is Cuba Gooding Jr. In fact, I think, if he hard slapped his agent in front of a convent of nuns, cut off the poor gentleman’s head, and wore it for a hat, I am pretty sure that he could get off in a public trial because of the bad career moves and movies the agent has chosen for him. In the early 1990s, Cuba Gooding Jr. had a rocket on his back. He burst onto the scene in John Singleton’s 1991 film, Boyz N The Hood. Five years later, he stood on the stage of the Academy Awards holding his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Jerry Maguire. The world appeared to be his oyster. That little golden statue is supposed to give a boost to a career. Instead, it led to films like Boat Trip, Snow Dogs, Dirty, and Norbit. Now anyone who has seen Snow Dogs would think that things could not get any worse for Cuba, then along comes a sequel to an Eddie Murphy film that even Eddie Murphy would not do. For those of you who haven’t kept up with Eddie’s career for the last decade or so, do you remember when the Fonz on Happy Days was cool? He was a skirt chasing bad guy on a motorcycle. Then came that episode where they showed that he had a heart underneath that leather jacket. Pretty soon it was a little more heart with each episode until he was living above the Cunninghams and was the biggest wuss in Milwaukee. By the final season he was a married shop teacher with a blonde-haired muppet for a child, the ultimate family man. Coolness vanished from him faster than after-hours activities at a rabbit’s singles bar. The same thing has happened to Eddie Murphy. The man prowled the stage like a caged lion spewing his politically incorrect humor like venom from a snake. He was cool. He was the next Richard Pyror. Cut to two decades later, Murphy’s name is associated with crappy family films that he gets huge paydays to do. It appears that Orin Hatch has taken over Reggie Hammond’s/Axel Foley’s body. (What happened? What turned him into the black Bob Hope, but with even lamer material? It was a cash grab. He admitted as much when he said, "Every bad decision I've made has been based on money. I grew up in the projects and you don't turn down money there. You take it, because you never know when it's all going to end.”) One of his worst choices, the last few years, was Daddy Day Care. 1950s notions of clueless, hands-off fathers, mixed with gags that would have had Full House fans rolling their eyes. In a society that loves Dancing With the Stars and wonders what Paris Hilton is up to, it is little wonder that Daddy Day Care took in over $100 million. Sequel time. One little problem, Eddie Murphy did not want to do it. Cue Cuba Gooding Jr., because no one is going to notice that Charlie Hinton is not Murphy. For those who have forgotten, Charlie Hinton and Phil, two fathers who lost their job in product development at a large food company, are forced to stay at home and take care of the kids and decide to open a day care. Now it was pretty funny when Michael Keaton did the Mr. Mom thing in 1983. We can forget that fathers have become more and more involved in their children’s care over the last 20 years. Watching these two papas employ unconventional methods, to get those traditional comedy high spots of men getting kicked in the groin, poppy jokes, and flatulent toddlers, because nothing is funnier than diaper jokes. Well, it is more of the same. What is the hook this time? Charlie is put in charge a kid’s day camp. Not only that, but he has to put up with his hard charging military father (Richard Gant – Norbit, “Deadwood”). Hilarity all around? Not so much. I just wish I could have found a way of turning this thing off with my toes.

Verdict: A More Awful Sequel To An Awful Movie