Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

I was highly excited to see this movie since the original from 1991 is a favorite. This movie is just not funny. It tries too hard. The unoriginal concept to this was a huge let down. I really tried to enjoy this but I couldn't. The movie is a huge letdown to anyone thinking this might be a funny modern version of the original.

The problem I have with this movie is it's trying to culturally change the original story. The kids were acting too grown. The attitudes these characters displayed were bothering. This movie really paints a bad picture on the original. Even though they call it re-imagined, it just seemed like a hot pile of garbage. I really wanted to rate it 2-stars, but I couldn't. I was giving this the benefit of the doubt too many times and should have just turned it off. I painfully let it play until the end.

They rated the new one higher than the old one? I dont blame the actors, or crew but I don't understand how a "reboot" of a cult classic is getting higher praise than the source material. This is why I can't stand RT or a lot of critics for that matter. Their opinion fits a "mold" so their colleagues won't outcast them. Ridiculous. Ludicrous. Asanine. Once again the actors and crew did their best to reboot a movie long forgotten. Next they will reboot "Adventures In Babysitting" or "Weekend at Bernies" but I'm sure the critics will give those movies praising reviews as well, no matter how good or bad it is. Dont even take my review at face value, watch both movies and make up your own minds.

Wade Allain-Marcus has directed the reboot of 1991's "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead." It's unclear why he bothered.

In the update, Tanya (Simone Joy Jones - fresh from "Bel Air," another retread) is seventeen and the oldest of four siblings. After a meltdown at work, their mom is sent to a resort for some mandatory R&R. Sure. Happens all the time. The kids are left in the "care" of an elderly, pistol-wielding maniac who promptly passes away. Right. Rather than bothering their mom, the kids decide to dispose of the body and fend for themselves. Of course they do. With the help of her siblings, Tanya lies about her age, gins up a fake résumé and gets a job at a company specializing in fast fashion. Uh huh. Desultory observations about adulthood, responsibility and getting by financially dribble out after that.

In the original film, the lead role was played by Christina Applegate, an actual teenager, who was in the middle of an eleven-year run on "Married... With Children." Her interactions with Joanna Cassidy, who played the owner of the fashion company, were the most redemptive elements of a film that was panned by the critics. A high-water mark was a critic labelling the film "amusing fluff." (It got a 35 score on Metacritic.) Inexplicably, the reboot hews closely to this marginal original story. The only novel element in any of this is that the family at the center of the story is Black.

The casting here is uneven. Jones, who plays Tanya, is twenty-five years old. She struggles to be convincing as a seventeen-year-old. However, her charm and effervescence give the film what little energy it's able to generate. As the two youngest siblings, Ayaami Sledge and Carter Young are cute, cuddly, chatty and clever. On the other hand, portraying the role of the lead fashionista is Nicole Richie, who has made a career out of being the daughter of singer Lionel Richie and the sidekick of Paris Hilton. With practice, diligence and hard work, her acting could someday rise to abysmal. Today is not that day. She and some of the other cast members say their lines and then pause a beat, apparently hoping for a sitcom laugh track to bail them out. Help does not arrive.

This is a film with limited aspirations that are underachieved.

Came across this movie on a list of remakes in 2024. I didn't make it half way through the movie. Just so bad.

Read a summary of the end and I was glad I skipped it.

The remake wasn't needed at all. It falls in line with a long list of updated remakes that just fall flat.

Nothing of substance was added by remaking a cult classic.

The problems and issues from the original don't translate well in an updated movie.

Acting wasn't great. The movie felt like a launching pad kinda a movie that had too many failures to launch.

Having Danelle Harris make a cameo was a nice call back to the original.

It was ok. Passed the time.

But I can't get past the fact that these kids in 2024 weren't clued up enough to even consider that the babysitter was someone relative and check that before they dumped her body. Even the kid that was compassionate to crows! Thats easy to do these days and I think kids of today would be that thoughtful, if they're good kids, like these were. So the fact they just dumped her, even if she was a cranky old lady made me not care much for the kids at all.

But also the filling her with alcohol and driving her in to a tree, might have worked; however when she was pulled from the water there would be no water in her lungs and an investigation would begin. So not quite an open shut case.... Which would be fine, if they didn't end it with a news story trying to wrap it up neatly.

Just seems like they could have done better. This story worked in the 90's, not so much in 2024. That's on the writers.