Studio: Hbo Home Video Release Date: 12/15/2009Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead aspires to be a cross between Home Alone and Risky Business, with Christina Applegate as an inadvertent scam artist who gets in over her head and somehow pulls it off. When her mother goes to Australia for two months, Sue Ellen (Applegate) thinks she’s going to be in charge–until an elderly tyrant of a babysitter arrives. But on the very first night the old lady has a heart attack and keels over. Sue Ellen and her siblings leave the body at a mortuary, only to discover afterward that all the money their mother had left for the summer was in the babysitter’s clothes. So Sue Ellen has to get a job. Thanks to a trumped-up resume, she ends up as an executive assistant at a clothing manufacturer. For a while she keeps her head above water by skillfully exploiting a friendly coworker, but her brothers and sisters are running amok at home and a venomous receptionist has it in for her at work. The role-reversal humor of Sue Ellen having to mother her siblings is unsurprising, but Applegate is unexpectedly appealing; her scenes with Josh Charles (Dead Poet’s Society, Threesome) have a sweet chemistry. Joanna Cassidy (Blade Runner, The Laughing Policeman) plays Sue Ellen’s boss and a young David Duchovny (The X-Files, The Rapture) is a weaselly clerk. –Bret Fetzer
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April 21, 2008
#1
hi. i never went so school and i dont know how to write reviews and i run sentences together and dont capatalize my i’s.
April 21, 2008
#2
I use to like this movie when I was in elementary but now that I’m 16 I don’t really like this film. The dialogue is corny and the movie is really slow. It’s sort of like a spoof from Home Alone and jokes related to Bill and Ted’s. I hate it when they have movies where they make fun of Bill and Ted’s because Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is one of my favorites of all time. I just hope they won’t make another movie like that but stay away from this movie it’s horrible. If you were in elementary you’ll like it but I’m older now and I think it’s stupid.
April 22, 2008
#3
Should be entertaining for most simpletons out there (most of you), but in essence just another coorporately generated formulaic Hollywood attempt to cash in on fleeting stardom (in this case of Christina Applegate). Unrealistically, the film’s music and fashion predate the 1992 film by about five years; giant tacky earings, acid washed jeans, heavy-metal music, popping. Another Hollywood unrealism: Christina Applegate just out of the shower, wet and in nothing but a towel barges in on her teenage brother and his bong-head, beer guzzling high-school friends; not one of them so much as raises an eyebrow and they all seem more interested in entertaining each other with their half-witted snide comments. What? Corporate Hollywood takes a lot of other liberties to support the ultra-stupid plot of a 17-year old high-schooler fudging a resume and landing an executive position for the Summer. Maybe something to be expected in a comedy, but the film contains not one “laugh”. Applegate’s performance can do nothing to save an irritatingly unrealistic plotline, unbelievable premise (parent leaves kids with a 90-year old baby sitter to run off to Australia for the Summer), and unoriginal, unbelievable characters. A dull, dull moment. Maybe better if you’re stoned?
April 22, 2008
#4
this movie was so stupid, their babysitter died while parents are away so big sister has to get responsible and get a job, she lies and gets a job and crazy things happen at work and home. Sounds entertaining but it isn’t.
April 22, 2008
#5
My god this movie stinks. Not to mention it comes on a lot on HBO and it gets old. Don’t waste your time. Home Alone is lots better than watching this crap. It’s just about a couple of kids who gets babysitted by an old lady who looks 100 and she dies and they all decide to take the house for themselves. It’s stupid, cheesy, and acting sucks. Stay away from this bad movie.