Murphy rediscovers funny

Just when you thought it was safe to file Eddie Murphy under "Used To Be Funny", he delivers the comic goods. Daddy Day Care is a long way from a return to the form of Trading Places or 48 Hours, but it is still a substantial improvement on more recent outings such as Pluto Nash or I Spy.

Murphy plays one of two middle-class, lightly chauvinist men who are forced by circumstances into running a day-care centre for toddlers. It hardly sets pulses racing in anticipation of wall-to-wall laughs, but the fact that the film manages to be even fitfully funny is little short of amazing.

When Charlie (Murphy) and his colleague Phil (Jeff Garlin) are made redundant from their advertising agency, they find that they no longer have the resources to keep their children at Mrs Harridan's (Anjelica Huston) expensive pre-school establishment. With his wife at work, Charlie lights upon a moneymaking scheme in collaboration with Phil, who is having serious childcare issues of his own. Why not set up a cheaper alternative to the Harridan place in the comfort of Charlie's own home?

Naturally, given their joint inexperience in handling their own children, let alone anyone else's, disaster beckons. Mayhem, mess, tears, kicks in the shins and potty jokes are well documented in movies about infant miscare, but the additional presence of the childlike Marvin (Steve Zahn) here, recruited because of his fluency in Klingon (useful when dealing with Trekkie kids), and the well-selected child actors raise the level of the comedy.

The predictable plot is occasionally forgotten in a welter of small but well-formed jokes and observations about fathers and their increased responsibility for child-rearing. And several minor characters pep things up considerably, including their former boss's ferocious wife whose child can only be controlled by dollar-bill bribery. Best of all, though, is Jonathan Katz's strait-laced childcare inspector who is hijacked into delivering a puppet show with Star Trek figures.

Serious-minded commentators and wouldbe educators might sneer at the notion of a movie that promotes childish anarchy as a viable alternative to learning foreign languages at the age of four, but they are missing the point.

This is a dumb-kids-versus-adults comedy of colliding characters that, in spite of a few miscalculations, is relatively innocent, relatively inoffensive and relatively amusing in comparison with many others on sale at the Hollywood comedy store.

Daddy Day Care
Cert: PG