Don’t Tell Mom the
Babysitter’s Dead (Stephen Herek, 1991)
Five kids are left home when their
mother leaves town on a three-month vacation to Australia, only to have their
geriatric babysitter die of a heart attack, leading to the eldest teen, Sue
Ellen (Christina Applegate), to scam
her way into taking a job at a hip Los Angeles fashion company to feed and
support her needy siblings.
This review
of a film of the early 1990’s is not only a return to form but also a reminder
of how film criticism can be tainted by our path in life and how some film can
be a return in time as it is for nostalgia and also time or episodic memory of
our own life. Lately, Werner Herzog
was speaking about the story we each create in our own heads when we are
watching a movie. It is a parallel story to the one that is told on the screen
by its author. So for me, American films circa 1982 to 1993 are linked to the
story of my childhood and each film of that time is like watching a bit of my
memory. It is a struggle for me to not try to relate too much to everything I
gaze of these films.
The funny
thing is it was my first time watching Don’t
Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead but it was my wife that watched it many
times back when she was a preteen dreaming of fashion.
Much like Summer School (1987), Don’t Tell Mom is a summer vacation
flick for teens released on June 7 of 1991 and it is a Home Alone (1990) for this age trunk. While not being as succesful
as the Macauley Culkin vehicule or
as funny as Summer School, it is
quite entertaining and Christina
Applegate gives an honest performance. The director also put classic movie
references here and there for the most knowledgeables of us to notice.
This is the
kind of movie that puts you in a special mood and far from being the best of
1991 (it was a pretty decent year in fact with JFK, Raise the Red Lantern,
A Brighter Summer Day) it is a film
that can easily be in my rainy summer afternoon rotation along Summer School, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
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