Kay Brandt is an important Adult filmmaker, and I have tried to see all her work. Her latest for Adam & Eve, "Babysitting the Baumgartners" is well-crafted, but Kay is deficient in the dramatics department, creating an overlong (at 4 full hours) work that lacks the necessary character and story progression to keep the viewer involved. Instead, many scenes merely repeat earlier situations with such minor variation as to be prunable.
Though she only gets third billing, Sara Luvv is the star of the feature, getting one of her best screen roles to date. She's the au pair/babysitter for Doc and Carrie Baumgartner played by Mick Blue and Anikka Albrite. They take her with them on a summer vacation to their beach house, and sex results -that in a nutshell describes the entire 4 hour movie.
Along the way there are over 14 sex scenes (depending on how you count: does soft-core or just masturbation constitute a sex scene in today's "vignettes only" Adult world?), mainly involving Sara. She is frequently the voyeuse, catching her employers making love, and instantly masturbating as a result. Before long she joins in, and it is the open marriage/menage a trois aspects of this story, adapted by Kay from a novel by Selena Kitt, that forms the central interest of the picture.
Brandt takes a pornographer's perspective to the material that is unfortunate. There are plenty of opportunities for conflict or confrontation, but if one starts, as porno people are wont to do, from a "sex is everything" and "repression of impulses is bad" point-of-view, then every chance encounter turns to full-blown passionate sex. Sara is seduced by the beautiful couple, but early on I was wary of their motives and expected something to happen. Other than a momentary sort of twist at the very end, not part of the film proper, nothing comes of their bringing Sara into their bed, other than a lot of sexual activity for us to watch.
Also, the need to broaden the action beyond just 3 people (and avoid a relentlessness like Oshima's claustrophobic "In the Realm of the Senses" and its nuclear couple) injects AJ Applegate as another au pair, suitable for humping. Brandt very awkwardly adds her to the story, at first in a teaser scene in which Kay herself appears, looking quite glamorous for a mere cameo, bringing AJ over to visit the beach house. Who Kay's character is and what her relationship is to AJ is not revealed, at best I gathered she is an old pal of Carrie's. After this intro, AJ does not reappear until hours later on Disk 2 of the DVD set, available for romantic action as Sara rather sarcastically shows her how to take care of the little kid. Following porn tradition (see especially PT's "The Masseuse" as a famous case in the Clint Eastwood "American Sniper" vein) the child is never shown.
The acting is excellent, even Mick who usually seems bewildered when called upon by a director to come out of his gonzo shell. (In the amusing BTS short subject Brandt makes fun of Mick and his "dancing cock" when preparing a cute scene, and I kind of felt sorry for him in a 2016-version-of sexual harassment in the workplace turned on its head way.) The visuals by Brandt's right-hand-man Quasarman are quite good, and overall I would have to rate this as quality Vacation porn. But even light comedies feature conflict, and it's wholly lacking here.
