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 (Lochlyn Munro) of richie-rich Camp Canola next door wants to buy Camp Driftwood out. There's a "methane problem" in the outhouse, too, and I think it leaked onto the script.
Having absorbed movies like "Meatballs" and "The Bad News Bears" at a cellular level, the five screenwriters give Charlie and Phil the standard mixed bag of campers: the Thug, the Nerd, the Know-It-All, 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 end credits.
Charlie's big problem is that he's a modern Family-Movie Dad: a castrated weenie whose son (Spencir Bridges) looks at him with pity and contempt. Time to call in the Marines in the person of Charlie's own father, retired Colonel Buck Hinton (Richard Gant), who whips the little snots into military formation. Goes one marching chant, "G.I. Joe is turning blue/There are peanuts in his poo."
Just when "Daddy Day Camp" is beginning to look like a Defense Department recruitment ad, the movie makes the case for Charlie's style of paternal loving-kindness. It's an impressive contortion act that supports whichever approach, tough-love or coddling, suits your personal fancy.
Not that kiddie audiences will care when they've got this much flatulence, projectile vomiting, and pee-filled water balloons to keep them occupied. "Daddy Day Camp" knows that gross-out gags are a staple of elementary school comedy, and it doesn't care what mom 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.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe .com. For more on movies, go to boston .com/ae/movies/blog.
