Production notes

In October 2003, Spyglass Entertainment announced family comedy The Pacifier was slated to begin production in early 2004. The following month, it was announced the film would be co-produced and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures with Vin Diesel to star. In January 2004, Adam Shankman joined the film as director after Four Christmases, another Spyglass film to which Shankman was attached, was delayed upon Columbia Pictures realizing it was not prudent to have two holiday themed films in production simultaneously as they had already committed to the Tim Allen vehicle Skipping Christmas.

Entertainment Weekly predicted that the film would earn about $17 million and come in second behind John Travolta's Be Cool. It opened at #1 in the box office upon its opening weekend with $30.6 million. By the end of its run, it earned $198.6 million worldwide.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 21% approval rating based on 127 reviews and an average rating of 3.90/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Vin Diesel parodies his tough guy image for the family audience, but the result is only moderately amusing." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 30 out of 100 based on 27 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, writing, "This premise is promising, but somehow the movie never really takes off." Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote: "If [audiences] swallow this odoriferous exercise in calculated career repositioning, they'll swallow anything."