Overrated and overhyped

Amateur movie with Big budget

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The story of a vicious bitter old lady babysitting should not have been cut so short. First of all, the previews in the movie theaters at the time made out most of the preview misleading the audiences to believe that the babysitter would take up a bigger part of the movie. Secondly, they set up several good scenes with the babysitter (Eda Reiss Meringue) (such as her angrily stopping letting the kids watch TV and making them write book reports, for example on the life of the aardvark) and then just dropped them. Third, the writers made the old lady drop dead before the oldest punk rock kid Kenny (Keith Coogan) ever even saw her. I guess that at least set up a rather amusing joke where after she died, Kenny saying "yes, she was a great babysitter". I liked that. Kenny saying that after he first of all, he never saw her, and secondly, she was hardly great. Also sort of amusing was the implication that the old lady seeing Kenny's bedroom is what made her die. A bedroom that was super messy, with heavy metal playing, posters of half naked girls (Samantha Fox (she was a hot late 80s girl)), and with stashes of weed visible. I liked Kenny, but him continuously yelling "rock and roll!" was so cliché, even back then. Christina Applegate I always found super hot, after always watching her on "Married with children". Some of this movie was pretty innocent and feel good, but some of it was dumb too. When the kid's mom goes on a two month summer vacation to Australia and leave the kids with a sadistic old lady, much to Christina's (Sue Ellen, Sue El, Swell; her name shortened) protest, we get a ten minute long tops session of the babysitters scenes before she dies. Then, after a couple more amusing bits of the kids leaving a trunk with her body in it with message "nice old lady inside, died of natural causes" at the funeral home, and then too late realizing that they left the money on the dead babysitters person, they are all stuck and broke with almost two more months before mom comes home. Then the remainder, the main story of the film starts, Swell needing to work to support everyone for the next two months. Kenny was selfish there refusing to find a job too making Swell take on that full role. But I guess Kenny was needed to stay home and watch the little ones, even though he doesn't do a good job of that, getting stoned with his buddies in his room while one of the little ones plays on the roof, falls off and breaks his leg. The main story with Swell working at an office is pretty good but not real good, as of the short section of working at Happy face's (Happy face is the goofy overly eager manager) Clown Dog fast food where she meets Brian (Josh Charles). Her and Brian have a sort of cheesy love story (they hang out at the beach and also (please!) bounce around a department store on big bouncy balls, the type you see 7 year olds on). Brian also thinks his Clown Dog van makes him a hero when he comes to pick up the stranded kids outside of Chucky Cheeses when (chortle), Liza Mineli and Maralyn Monroe (well, thieves in those celebrities' masks) steal the kid's (well, the "borrowed" babysitter's) car. Brian gets suspicious of Swell cause she won't tell him where she works, reason being he's Karen's (Jayne Brook) brother. Karen is the super bitchy receptionist would-be executive assistant at the clothing company that gets her job taken away from Swell. Swell got the high level job through lying big time on her resume. Karen obviously now has a pretty major grudge towards Swell. I sort of understand Karen being sore with Swell since she pushed, as a newbie, ahead of someone who's been with the company for a while and grabbed a high level position away from her who was someone that the executive position was previously promised to. But Karen had already been unnecessarily rude to Swell before that happened when Swell innocently went to the wrong place to apply for a receptionist job. Executive Rose (Joan Cassidy) was initially the one who was gonna promote Karen to be her assistant but desperately didn't want to due to Rose admitting that Karen is usually a very difficult person to get along with. So Karen still needs to take some responsibility for having had such a bad attitude towards people. It's still not right to break a promise to someone you promised a promotion to, but there's no excuse for Karen being such a bitch in general to begin with. I'd say both parties were at some fault here. Another sleazy character was Gus (John Getz), a guy that Rose was involved with but decided to start hitting on Swell behind her back. Gus was sleazy since A), Swell made it clear she wasn't interested in him but he still pursued her anyway, and B), Gus was cheating on Rose. You can see Gus's sleaziness also when he takes Swell to a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant for lunch, buys her martinis (waiter snobbily to Swell: "sweet..or..dry?") and tells Swell in a sultry slobbering way "you will love the chicken here, it's very 'tender'". A couple other things kinda dumb: Swell taking the whole petty cash box home and the younger kids stealing lots of cash from it to buy expensive things like a vast entertainment system. The other dumb thing was Brian sobbing and pleading to take Swell back over the loud speaker of his Clown dog van outside of Swell's house completely oblivious to a big party with lots of people going on. Quite ridiculous don't ya think?

"Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" is an all-time comedy great. It shows that when you work hard and work together how you can get something done. When Sue Ellen, Walter, Kenny, and Melissa's mother goes to Australia for the summer they are left home with a babysitter. She's not any ordinary babysitter, she's and old lady that is rule oriented and is very, very strict. The kids decide that they have had enough and when Sue Ellen, the oldest of the kids, goes down to talk to her, she is found dead. They have no money and Sue Ellen is working for a clothing company for the summer. Thus starts a funny and often touching comedy. What first looks like a straight forward comedy manages to be a lot more. The fish-out-of-water scenario at work rapidly transforms into a realization of how restricting an adult life can be.Despite plot holes and a too rapid chain of events (this film will never join any good "classic videos" collection) that make everything too convent, this is a good movie for generation X. Younger audiences especially accustomed to extensive background checks (ala social media... etc.) are going to have a very hard time swallowing the pre-internet resume, where people actually just turned in a hard copy resume and their background was not actually given a careful look-over. Featuring a great cast of actors such as Joanna Cassidy and Keith Coogan ("Adventures in Babysitting"), "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dead" is a grown-up version of "Home Alone" for teens. Amusing, funny, and entertaining, it was Applegate's only feature-film hit. While she made other low-cost films such as "Streets", this film happens to be her best work outside from her work on "Married... With Children.." If you are looking for a great flick for the family this is it.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

So Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (AKA The Secret to My Success 2: Electric Boogaloo) is one of the most shameless wannabee ripoffs I've seen. You can tell from the image that this movie has on IMDb. The pull quote from the top of the image reads "Its Home Alone Times Five"...Whoever wrote that should be stripped of the right to free speech. It wants you to think that this movie has something to do with a bunch of kids and the fact that they have to deal with being "home alone". But it doesn't. There's 5 kids and the movie only deals with 2 of them. I say that because they're the only ones who have an arc. One of them plays baseball, one of them had a girlfriend at 11 years old but then didn't for reasons we don't know or care, and one of them fell off a roof. Wacky. So it begins with a quick intro to the two main characters, the oldest sister and brother. The brother is a stoner, and the sister...seems to be just a normal girl with normal problems one would have at her age. RANT ABOUT THE MOM: just about the worst person in the world. Seriously? You leave your 5 kids alone for 2 months? This is a premise no one can identify with. Because...WTF. She asked the babysitter if she knows there are 5 kids 1 minute before she leaves...So I'm going to skip over the babysitter part. Because its not important. The movie's title is about her dying, and its not the least bit important. There's no drama from this situation. You figure it can be almost like Weekend At Beernies, where they have to play like she's still alive to people. Like a relative comes by to check on them or whatever and they have to make it seem like she's there. But no, there's two scenes on the phone where the mom's asks where she is and they're just like "uhhhhhhhh shes gone".OK, so Kelly Bundy needs a job now to pay for food. Which is the only thing the movie shows as a need when the mom is away. Apparently the big house they live in is devoid of food when the mom leaves for 2 months. You figure this could be an amount that a fast food job could handle. But Kelly says F that I'm too good for this ish. So then she try's to get a high class job at a fashion...place. And she gets one under false pretense. But there's some mean lady trying to bring her down. This is pretty much the stakes of this movie, and why this movie fails. If she gets exposed, there is no bad thing that would happen. She would just lose her job, and her mom would come back a few days later and life would go back to normal. You could say that she was embezzling money and she would have gotten in trouble for that, but it's like 3 grand...maybe probation...not something a movie should be based around. Blah blah, the other kids make appearances here and there...blah blah, the stoner wonders if this life of "Rock and Roll!!!" is whats best...blah blah wait, is that David Duchovny? What is he doing here? He could have been written out and the movie would have preformed exactly the same. I guess I should just end this thing now. So Veronica Corningstone is going to save the company with her fashion sense. It has never been established that she has a superior fashion ability. She just grabs some clothes, and off she goes. You could have made this make sense in 30 seconds with a scene earlier in the movie with her displaying some sort of fashion opinion at a high end clothes store or something. Showing she has some sort of untapped potential at this. But nah.She for some reason decides to hold a fashion show at her house. You can debate that it was to save money which she didn't have, but that party looked like it cost a s-ton. This was a perfect opportunity to give all the kids a quick arc to show that they can do chores now. At the party everything goes fine til the boyfriend shows up. I didn't mention him before because he's not really important (they could have made him important but there is a 30 minute stretch where he's not mentioned or appears). He sees a house with 50 cars parked in front, doesn't recognize the signs that this might not be the best time to confess his love over a loudspeaker, and messes everything up. Doesn't matter because the Mom shows up and everything's exposed. Which results in nothing. Nothing at all... Listen, the point is that this movie has no purpose. It is two movies rolled into one, resulting in nothing. You can do a movie about a dead babysitter, and the crazy mishaps resulting in that, or you can do a movie about a girl trying to fake her way into high society...which is what they did. The problem is that we don't have any background or connection with this main character and the danger she's taking in lying about this job she's in. She's just doing it to make some food money. And she'll be OK in a couple of days when mommy gets home. And this is the director's fault. Somewhere he should have put more meaning in the characters. Giving them more of a reason to be better, or establishing that they are crappy to begin with. The older brother was this, but was done with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Its your job to give this movie purpose and drive, and it pretty much lacks it all.

Okay right from the top this is not great art but with that title were you really expecting it to be? If you want that go watch a three hour Ingmar Bergman film but if you want a breezy, silly comedy with good performances and a snappy pace than this is for you.The whole setup is preposterous but so are many 80 & 90's comedies, Adventures in Babysitting, Home Alone etc, but once this one gets past its bumpy intro scenes it actually becomes a more focused story of a young girl finding her way through unexpected responsibilities.It helps a great deal that the cast headed by two very good actresses. Christina Applegate as Sue Ellen the young teen who finds out she is more resourceful than she realized and the marvelous Joanna Cassidy as Rose, her new boss. Keith Coogan is also a lot of fun as stoner brother Kenny who belatedly grows up. Besides the good performances the film is filled with some amusing quotes, enjoyable situations and a flashback to 90's fashion. A pleasant diversion but again don't expect anything high toned and you'll enjoy the ride.