Grand-Daddy Day Care’s trailer proves some franchises need to know when to stop. Eddie Murphy showed with his run on Saturday Night Live that he was destined for stardom, which he proved with his film debut in 1982’s 48 Hours. This Walter Hill directed action movie helped popularise the mismatched partner genre of that decade, and Murphy’s charisma was undeniable. He followed up with further hits like Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop. The hits kept coming throughout the 1980s, but by the 1990s projects like Vampire In Brooklyn and Beverly Hills Cop III showed his box-office powers were waning a little.
Eddie Murphy instead reinvented himself with a series of family-friendly comedies, including The Nutty Professor, Doctor Dolittle, and Meet Dave. He also fronted Daddy Day Care in 2003, about a man who loses his job and decides to open a day-care out of his home; needless to say, looking after lots of unruly children leads to various comical situations. While the film received resoundingly bad reviews it was still a decent-sized hit for the studio.
Murphy wisely opted out of a return, however, with Cuba Gooding Jr. (American Horror Story: Roanoke) taking over as Murphy’s character for 2007’s Daddy Day Camp. This also marked the directorial debut of Fred Savage (The Princess Bride) but it was showered with horrid reviews and grossed a fraction of the original’s box-office take. The series seemed to have run its course until Grand-Daddy Day Care arrived in 2019.
Like the Grand-Daddy Day Care trailer shows, a writer (Reno Wilson) is tasked with looking after his aging father-in-law Eduardo (Danny Trejo, Machete), and decides to turn his house into daycare for the elderly when he sees a chance to make some money. The overriding issue with Grand-Daddy Day Care is that it’s just not funny, with the humor either riding on Wilson’s character slipping or falling and lame ageist gags. Choosing to focus on senior citizens instead of children is also conceptually odd since the movie’s humor is a little too mature to appeal to younger children but way too childish to appeal to anyone older.
Grand-Daddy Day Care is even too meek to explore any potential drama that comes with taking care of the elderly, such as Eduardo’s growing forgetfulness. The cast is full of veteran greats like George Wendt (Cheers), Barry Bostwick and James Hong, but it doesn’t give them much to do. Grand-Daddy Day Care, at the bare minimum, manages to be better than Daddy Day Camp, but if that’s the best that can be said about it, it’s proof the franchise needs no further entries
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