Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
June 7, 1991
HBO/ Warner Bros.
Comedy, Romance
VHS
B-

Like Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, this Stephen-Herek-directed Bush-I-era teen movie's parts are stronger than its whole.  In this case, I kept catching bits and pieces on cable and finding them entertaining (especially "The dishes are done, man!"), so I finally taped the whole thing.  I think DTMBD is a stronger movie than BTEA, but like its 1991 peer, Too Much Sun, it suffers from an inaccurate "ticking clock" plot.  We're told in the beginning that the Mom of the title will be in Australia for two months, but it seems like a month at most passes.  Having her come back "a week early" doesn't really help matters.  And it's never clear anyway what exactly her reaction to the shenanigans of her five bratty children might be.  She calls a couple times but the main concern is that if they tell Mom about the babysitter's death, then she'll come back early and spoil their summer fun and independence, even if there's not all that much fun or independence to be spoiled.

There are other plotholes, most significantly those centering around the main plot, that of 17-year-old firstborn Sue Ellen, nicknamed Swell, landing an administrative assistant's job with a faked resume.  Even when her cover is blown, in stages, her boss Rose manages to be remarkably forgiving.  So that's not really a threat either.  And it does seem odd that neither love interest Bryan, nor his bitchy sister Carolyn, realize until near the end that the Sue Ellens in their lives are one and the same.

In some ways, this is more of a fantasy than BTEA.  Little girls, and even grown women (like me in my mid 20s), may envy Sue Ellen.  Yes, her siblings are annoying, and yes, she's got work stress, but both her boss and her boyfriend are incredibly nice.  Also, Sue Ellen's fashion sense is given free range, even working for a company that manufactures uniforms.  (Her redesigns at the backyard fashion show are hideous, showing that that neon/citrus trend of the late '80s, as seen in Back to the Beach, was still flourishing in the new decade.  But the outfits she wears herself are great.)  Also, even when there's no food in the house, it is a wonderful big old house.

Swell is played by Married with Children's Christina Applegate, then 19, and she's paired with Josh Charles, also 19, as the warm, funny Bryan.  Their scenes together are surprisingly sweet and wholesome-- I mean on the level of Frankie & Annette-- despite the sex humor elsewhere in the movie.  (The 48-hour orgasm/ Santa Barbara exchange is great.)  Also, Swell smokes, and her brother Kenny does drugs, till he cleans up his act.  Nonetheless, I could see people letting little kids watch this movie.  They and you could do worse.  And, yes, this would be an interesting double feature with Zapped Again!, considering that fast food jobs appear in both.

David Duchovny plays Carolyn's boyfriend.  And, yes, Bryan Clark, here appearing as the doctor who's distractingly like Ronald Reagan (I mean, there's no comedic pay-off to it in this movie), occasionally played the by then former president.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
February 17, 1989
Orion
Comedy, Sci-Fi, Historical
VHS
C+

Every time I start to watch this movie (and I've seen it a few times since the original theatrical release, when I was 21 and living in Southern California), I wonder why I never got around to watching the Bogus sequel.  There's that awesome Big Pig song "I Can't Break Away" playing over the then-cutting-edge visuals as the opening credits play.  And there's the Bill & Ted bromance.  (With a typically '80s touch of them cheerfully calling each other "fag" after they hug in relief.)  And there's George Carlin as the coolest big-screen Rufus since Groucho's Mr. Firefly.

But then there's that darn time-travel plot.  Nothing against time travel of course, but so little is done with it.  We're meant to find it automatically funny when two modern dudes travel into the past, which it sort of is.  But we're also meant to find it automatically funny when the historical figures enter modern (1988) San Dimas, CA (actually Arizona).  And it just isn't.  Part of the problem is that the writers (and of course Bill & Ted) seem to have only a superficial knowledge of who these figures are, so we get a Beethoven who can hear well enough to appreciate a synthesizer, and a Socrates who hits on girls at the mall.  And a Napoleon who loves water slides and sundaes?

At this point, the movie is most notable for truly putting Keanu Reeves on the map, and for paving the way for Wayne and Garth and so on.  Note, Stephen Herek would also direct Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, about a very different Bush-Sr.-era teen.

Hal Landon, Jr., who plays Bill's father, was Cornfield in Scavenger Hunt.  Amy Stock was the nameless Girl in Bed in Soul Man, but she had since gotten married (becoming Amy Stock-Poynton) and worked her way up to the more memorable role of Bill's sexy young stepmother.  Philip V. Caruso (who seems to be primarily a still photographer) plays Dance Photographer here and would be War Commercial Photographer in Wag the Dog.