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April 01, 2008

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

Reaffirming My Hate for Christina Applegate

By Tram

This post is a part of the 2nd Annual White Elephant Film Blogathon

Fifteen minutes into Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, and I was convinced that I’ve already had it with this piece of shit. I was down to the last straw. Screw the dead babysitter! Call mommy and tell her the bad news! She’ll catch the next plane departing Australia, and the movie shall come to a quick and satisfying end! Of course, deep down, I knew I was deluding myself. This film was not gonna end anytime soon, with the uber-contrived plot device already set in motion. And so I spent the next hour and a half, wistfully wishing I was seeing anything else but this dreck. Because having had to see, perennial B-list movie thespian, Christina Applegate, mug for the cameras as Miss Full-Time Career Woman/Surrogate Mommy, for two hours, no less, was too much to bear.

Even more overbearing than grating Applegate’s performance is the film’s oh-so-hilarious gags. Isn’t a “comedy” supposed to be funny? Someone on the set should’ve sent a memo to the screenwriter and director: Situational comedy is only as funny as the execution. A bunch of stoners having the munchies is not a dead give-away to laughter. Nor is a ditzy girl stuck in a dopey fast food restaurant uniform, or a little boy stealing money to buy his girlfriend a diamond ring for chrissake.

It’s not hard to understand why Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead has such a devoted, teenage following. As Roger Ebert once wrote of the film, it’s “a consumerist, escapist fantasy for teenage girls”. I’m pretty sure more than a few girls would love to nab a high-paying job as executive assistant for a prominent LA fashion company, on a fluke, as Applegate’s character successfully did after forging an ideal resume from a guidebook. But leave your brain at the door, or better yet, rent an entertaining, teen fantasy film that doesn’t insult your intelligence (Chris Columbus’ Adventures in Babysitting comes to mind). Because I cannot tell you how many times I felt like gnawing my jaw up and down atop the laptop screen, as David Newman’s stupid infomercial score was playing every time Applegate’s boss gave her a seal of approval.

There are a few valid reasons to watch Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. Unfortunately, none of them have anything to do with quality. The first possible reason is that you are a masochist who enjoys pain. The second is that you like itty bitty bits of camp material that Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead actually has, most namely David Duchovony’s pre-“X-Files” get-up, the fashion couture envisioned by Applegate, and my future husband Josh Charles (Dead Poets Society, “Sports Night”), decked out in clown clothes. And now that I’ve screen-captured the latter, I see no reason why you should waste five bucks, much less two hours, on a crappy film such as this one.

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