I’ve written before about Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s ongoing debasement, and this was without even seeing Daddy Day Camp, which a couple publicists made repeated (and unsuccessful) entreaties for me to cover — even going so far as to (gasp!) phone, an extreme rarity in this digital age, and certainly so after a chain of email correspondence. Apparently, America pretty much agrees with my no-need-to-see assessment, as the aforementioned film arrived in theaters Wednesday with a thud, delivering just over $770,000, a $354 per screen average. It’ll conceivably pull in some family business this weekend, but the Wednesday opening was an attempt to expand and tap that market, to get them into theaters on less crowded off days before school started back up, and it failed miserably.

As for Gooding, deserved or not, he’s toxic, quite frankly. He has a dramatic supporting role in this fall’s hotly anticipated American Gangster, but the commercials and all the down-market crap are killing him. In fact, I had a fairly respected comedic actress tell me last year — off the record, but in no uncertain terms — that she pulled out of a project that turned an eye toward casting Gooding, tendering him an offer.