Eddie Murphy has an unerring habit that often goes unnoticed. And I'd like to expose it now: At some point in every Murphy movie, there is a scene that comments on whatever stage Murphy's career is in at the moment.

These scenes are so inevitable, you could develop a drinking game around them. Some of these moments are Nostradamus-like in their vagueness. Some are obvious and illuminating. Many are unintentional: In Beverly Hills Cop III, he hangs from a flailing amusement park ride, and it's an unwitting comment on those herky-jerky Vampire-in-Brook-lyn years, a.k.a. 1989 to 1995.

At other times Murphy seems to speak directly to the audience: In The Nutty Professor, after learning to just be himself and not the smooth operator Buddy Love, he says: “Buddy's who I thought I wanted to be, who I thought the world wanted me to be. I was wrong.”

That inaugurated Murphy's gentler persona. It carried him through: Nutty Professor II, Dr. Dolittle, Dr. Dolittle 2, Showtime, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and voice work for Mulan and Shrek; he stars next in The Haunted Mansion, based on the Disney ride. But with Daddy Day Care - or as I call it, Sleepy Time - Murphy reveals self-doubt about the Softer Side of Eddie. First of all, the title of the movie is the movie. He plays a marketing executive who is fired, then opens a day-care center, then chases shin-kicking preschoolers for 90 minutes.

That's almost entirely what it's about. Murphy also dresses like a stalk of broccoli and wrestles a man dressed as a carrot, and it's cute for roughly 10 seconds. But, lo, that is not the career-defining moment I speak of, the inevitable, final transformation of Murphy from edgy, exciting comic to studio-financed vegetable. Daddy Day Care's career-defining moment is instead smack in the middle of intentional and accidental. Murphy is far too smart a comedian to miss its relevance; on the other hand - how could he let it slip in?

The moment I speak of begins like this: Murphy plays Charlie. He opens a day-care center in his home with his comic buddy Phil, played by Jeff Garlin of Curb Your Enthusiasm, who, for purposes of familiarity, occupies the Tom Arnold/John Goodman fat slob role. At first, they don't know what they're doing - diapers need changing, children need entertaining, sugar gets consumed in mass quantities - and their cross-town rivals, snooty Chapman Academy, can see that. But headmistress Harridan, played by Anjelica Huston in full Cruella DeVille rouge, is still intimidated. Daddy Day Care is fun; she peddles discipline.

Which brings us to The Moment: Harridan goes to Charlie's house to feel out her rival, whose chaotic business is nevertheless beginning to drain Chapman of its young charges. She sizes up Charlie's frazzled state, his business problems, and says these chilling words:

“Is this really what you want to do with the rest of your life - entertain 3-year-olds?”

Well, is it, Eddie?

Until now, I hadn't really considered Murphy's new gig as a child entertainer with an $18 million asking price as much of a burden. But Daddy Day Care is a nine-alarm metaphor for a career sanded down to banality. At their best, the Nutty Professor movies, in which he slips into multiple characters, let him indulge a talent for caricature. The Dr. Dolittle pictures were sunny and broad - Steve Martin movies, through and through - while his voice alone in Shrek let out a bit of that pent-up energy from Murphy's old Saturday Night Live days.

But Daddy Day Care doesn't have a clue what to do with him, so it strangely casts him as the straight man - a very straight, happy, successful, edgeless, bland man. And while that certainly means an innocuous day at the movies with your kids, a few of us out here never looked forward to the day when Murphy would aspire to the career of Fred MacMurray. He seems partially lobotomized, or perhaps he just came down from a sugar high with the rest of the cast. Murphy has this quick, real smile that we see when he's genuinely enjoying himself, but it's his bane: It's so genuine, when it's not on, you know he's completely off.

Kids bring it out, and director Steve Carr (Dr. Dolittle 2) assembles an adorable batch of rugrats who don't mug or play to the camera, and come off naturally manic, smart, lonely, sweet - whichever personality is tagged to them. One only wears a Flash costume, one has separation issues. The one wearing glasses explains she wants them to feed her mind.

But Carr spends so much time with Murphy and Co. figuring out how to handle the kids, that he doesn't seem to notice the movie, curiously, is funnier and cuter when Daddy Day Care runs smoothly. How these guys learn to pull it off is funny. When they take blows to the head, kicks to the shin - when they flail around with diapers, when the kids simply run in circles for minutes at a time as Garlin scurries after - Daddy Day Care feels like a ho-hum run-through, a dress-rehearsal stab at understanding what's funny and what's not funny.

Someone involved should have noticed the only real laugh comes in one of those obligatory outtake reels that runs with the closing credits. Murphy asks a kid what he wants and the kid says, “A peanut butter-jelly sandwich right after this scene.” Murphy cracks up and the kid looks around, startled by the sudden high spirits, and asks, “What's so funny?”

First Published May 9, 2003, 11:58 a.m.