Drop-In Workshop for Families: Production Design and Miniature Prop-making

Forget your typical summer camp: for the Thornberry family, every day is a camping trip! For five seasons on Nickelodeon, television nature show host Nigel Thornberry and his filmmaker wife, Marianne, traveled the globe with their family. In this feature-length film adaptation, the Thornberrys are on safari in Kenya when precocious daughter Eliza finds she can suddenly communicate with animals. None of the spunk of the series is lost by carrying the maximalist Klasky-Csupo character design into the feature film format, and this action-packed story proved to be a critical darling, earning an Oscar nomination for Original Song with “Father And Daughter” by Paul Simon.

When Charlie Hinton (Eddie Murphy) loses his high-powered marketing job and is forced to pull his son from an expensive private school, he decides to open a daycare center with the help of other unemployed fathers. Continuing Murphy’s successful string of family-friendly comedies—Dr. Dolittle (1998), Shrek (2001)—this super silly project convenes an incredible supporting cast including Jeff Garlin, Steve Zahn, Regina King, Anjelica Huston, and Kevin Nealon, and ultimately promotes a student-centered learning model for early childhood education. And if you’ve ever wondered what Eddie Murphy looks like dressed as a stalk of broccoli, this movie makes that dream come true.