The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • F9

Orlando Sentinel: PRODUCT: LIV DESK: LIV DATE: 06-15-2003 EDITION: FLA ZONE: FLA PAGE: F9.0 DEADLINE: 18.28 OP: walden COMPOSETIME: 20.42 CMYK Orlando Sentinel SUNDAY, JUNE 15, 2003 F9 Judge Hardy of '30s and '40s was 'the definitive movie father' MOVIES FROM Fl ing." And considering the mostly white history of movie dads, it's interesting not only that Murphy stars in Daddy Day Care but also that race isn't even addressed. "Society has changed in that way," says Rodkey. "It's a great thing. And as we go on, I think it's only going to get better." There is, however, an ethnic flair to Gregorio Cortez, the Latin dad played by Antonio Ban-deras in the Spy Kids series. But his ethnicity, as well as that of his family, is a gentle flavoring, not an issue.

"I had not seen it before," says Elizabeth Avellan, the Venezuela-born producer of the Spy Kids series and wife of its Mexican-American writer-director, Robert Rodriguez. "We're all the same people, we just have uniqueness about us." Avellan adds that an important aspect of this dad, who will be seen again in the upcoming Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, is that, not unlike Murphy's character, he thinks of his children as equals. In the first Spy Kids film, the Cortez kids actually rescue their folks from the bad guys. "It's like asking your kid to load up software for you, because you might screw it up," she says. "You're asking them for things, at a young age, that your parents would have never asked you to do." It's good news for real-life fathers that many of today's movie dads are positive figures.

Even a compulsive worrywart like Marlin inFindingNemo can be a hero to his child. "How brave he is!" says 9-year-old Alexander Gould, who provides the voice of little Nemo. Marlin faces jellyfish, sharks and other deadly perils to try to save his son. "He goes through anything everything," adds the boy. And what father wouldn't? Jay Boyar can be reached at jboyarorlandosentinel.com or COLUMBIA PICTURES 'Daddy Day Care Eddie Murphy (with Khamani Griffin) plays a businessman who takes on child-rearing duties and finds that he enjoys it.

torian Jeanine Basinger, you have to go through Judge Hardy, whom she calls "the definitive movie father." Portrayed with authority and a formal charm by Lewis Stone, he appeared in a popular movie series from 1937 to 1947. In such films as Judge Hardy's Children and Love Finds Andy Hardy, the Judge's ail-American teenage son, played by Mickey Rooney, typically lands in a pickle. "And then there comes "The says Basinger, chairman of the film-studies program at Wesleyan University. "He always has to go in the study and ask his dad. And his dad counsels him in the most gentle and intelligent way possible, and clears it all up for him." If Judge Hardy is the reigning father figure of the '30s and '40s, major movie dads of the '50s were often anything but regal.

These men could be overshadowed, if not thoroughly dominated, by their wives and children. In Father of the Bride, Spencer Tracy plays a father who finds himself shunted aside during his daughter's wedding preparations. There's a sitcomlike feel to this 1950 movie, in which Tracy's performance looks like a template for generations of ineffectual TV dads. "Decisions are being taken out of his hands," says Basinger. The early '60s were kinder to fathers.

They achieved a heroic stature in the figure of attorney Atticus Finch of 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird. "This is a statement of some kind of ideal," says Richard Cre-peau of the University of Central Florida's history department. "Any male who has seen that film would say: 'Yeah, I really would love to have been a father like Gregory Peck, who died last week, is Atticus, a Southern lawyer who defends a wrongly accused black client. Peck's performance embodies strength without violence, intelligence going: 'You're going to poke your eye out! Watch out for cars! You don't know what you're he says. "And I just stopped myself and realized: Wow! Here I have the best of intentions for this event and I'm completely missing out on the moment with him because I'm so afraid of something happening." The dad that Eddie Murphy portrays in Daddy Day Care is also based on actual experiences and feelings, especially those of screenwriter Geoff Rodkey.

Murphy plays a corporate type who takes on child-rearing responsibilities and finds that they fulfill him. "The thing that I think Eddie was really great at was that he relates to the kids without condescending to them," says Rod-key. "And that's something maybe you saw less of a generation ago" when "fathers, right across the board, were less directly involved in the child-rear without arrogance and bravery without braggadocio. As a single parent, adds Crepeau, Atticus is, of necessity, also something of a mother to his children. By the '70s, the Vietnam War and the generation gap had severely damaged the image of dear old dad.

Crepeau notes that in some films of the period, movie fathers came to possess "that veneer of respectability" that the era's anti-establishment movement was trying to "strip away." Don Corleone, the mob boss played by Marlon Brando in 1972's The Godfather, is, on the surface, as courtly and respectable as Atticus Finch, and a family man in every sense. But underneath, he is corrupt and ruthless, "the anti-Atticus," as Basinger puts it. Just as the '70s were ending came Kramer vs. Kramer, the 1979 production that dared to ask the revolutionary question: "What law is it that says a wo man is a better parent simply by virtue of her sex?" In such recent films as Finding Nemo and Daddy Day Care, it's pretty much taken for granted that a dad can be and should be nurturing. But as Ted Kramer, a dad whose marriage is breaking up in Kramer vs.

Kramer, Dustin Hoffman was breaking new ground. Working with director Robert Benton, Hoffman said just last year, that he shaped the film to reflect his own feelings about divorce (he was going through one at the time), fatherhood and gender roles. "I can't play a part unless I feel that I'm connected with it," says Hoffman. In 1989, Hollywood brought us Field of Dreams, one of the daddiest dad movies ever. Kevin Costner plays a New Age dad whose relationship with his remote, old-school father had been difficult at best.

Thanks to a little movie mag ic and the magic of baseball there is some sort of closure after he builds that baseball field. "It's the one film that made men cry at the movies," says Crepeau. "They were crying about their relationship with their father. It's a relationship that, for many men, had been strained." Unlike the movie dads of earlier days, today's film fathers are often defined by their sensitivity. Marlin, the neurotic father fish voiced by Albert Brooks in Finding Nemo, possesses many qualities often ascribed to the stereotypical overprotective mother qualities rarely glimpsed in earlier movie dads.

Andrew Stanton, who directed and co-wrote the film, says Martin's insecurities grew out of the filmmaker's own fears when he took his young son to the park. "I just spent the whole time Doc, playing in the symphony is no longer music to my ears. I need to change my tune. What can I do? rv-v. twti iffii mmm i www i' 0fA 42TL r- i I WW inr i in 11 HiirrmTTml Dr.

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