My Favourite Movies: Adventures in Babysitting

I’m on a bit of a nostalgia kick at the moment. One of the results is that I’ve been recently re-watching some of my favourite 80’s movies. Adventures in Babysitting is a creditable example of its type. Coming late to the party (1987) it had all of the elements of the teen movie that many of us grew up with. The plot, whilst basically rather silly, is a simple one. Chris Parker (played by the lovely Elisabeth Shue) has been dumped by her boyfriend and is depressed enough to accept a babysitting job despite feeling too old to do so – she’s 17. During what is expected to be a very dull evening she gets a call from her best friend who has run away from home – only to have also run out of money at the cities bus station. Feeling threatened she calls Chris to come pick her up. Torn between her duty to her friend and her responsibility to the kids she’s sitting, she decides to take them into the city with her. But after a blow-out on the freeway and the discovery of a purse left in the suburbs they become caught up in a series of increasingly bizarre events as they are chased by criminals across town in search of a very special Playboy magazine.

This to me was 98 minutes of fun. Shue was delightfully cute and quirky and even had a reasonable voice during her Blues number (which honestly has to be seen to be believed). The three kids are hardly ever annoying with the 10 year old Maia Brewton in particular giving a notable performance as a Thor obsessed pre-teen. The baddies were suitably 2 dimensional cut-outs complete with bad Italian accents and there was the obligatory romance bit between the High school senior Shue and the College student (played by George Newbern) whose party they crashed to use the bathroom. Then of course there were the clothes, those haircuts and the music all of which dripped 80’s so-called ‘style’. All in all it was often unintentionally funny and just as unintentionally evocative of a simpler and much more innocent age. Although it will never be hailed as a work of art or even as the best of its genre this is still a good example of a particular type of teen movie. It managed to push quite a few of my buttons when I first saw it 25 years ago and it still managed to do so – somewhat more gently – a few days ago.