I marked it high because of the original script idea and the great acting, but I have to say that the ending could have been better.
It is an audacious concept: babysitting teenagers are acting as high pay prostitutes for the fathers that drive them home. I felt that the high school teens were much too eager to have sex with strangers and that the wives were terrible if they didn't smell anything suspicious. In the end it all comes down, as it would be expected, but it unravels the complex feelings underneath in the process. The girls are all beautiful, Katherine Waterson plays great; John Leguizamo again brings great quality to a movie; the direction is really good. While the film has a great story to tell, I felt that the script was a bit naive.
Bottom line: it is a tensioned, raw even, autopsy of the real suburb feelings: the taken for granted wives, the ignored teenagers and the powerful urges of the overworked middle aged men, overlooked by their spouses.
The Babysitters
2007
Action / Adventure / Drama
The Babysitters
2007
Action / Adventure / Drama
Keywords: high schooldrugsdaughteradulterytrain
Plot summary
At 17, high-school junior Shirley Lyner is thinking about college and running a babysitting service that provides teen call girls to the dads of young children. In a long flashback, we see what brought her from being a babysitter to organizing and running the service. It starts with Michael, the father of children she baby-sits. A cup of coffee on the way home from his house, a night visit to a train yard, and one thing leads to another. Shirley can be ruthless, and tension builds when some of the clients take the girls to a mountain cabin and bring drugs. Then, one of the girls tries to freelance. Can this end well: is it a tragedy in the making? Do we all have secrets?
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
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A rather good idea with great start, but a bit of a simple ending
Babysitters ... club
I reckon movies like this (not these - a typo or small mistake in the movie, never mind) one right here, are responsible for wives being wary of Babysitters ... especially if they are young and pretty. On the other hand, the movie only exists because there is a fantasy about that.
The depiction of how it all starts is also well done. John Leguizamo is a really good actor too. And the female counterpart is great also (forgot her name - but she certainly was an adult at the time of shooting - they wouldn't allow it any other way in America). So while there is a sort of warning that there is lots of nudity and sexual situations, it didn't really feel that way.
Then again times have moved and some are more sensible than others. There is definitely a very long frontal nudity shot of our main female character - in case you care one way or the other. But and that is the point I am trying to make, the movie works anyway and with little titilation. It is because of the struggle of the main character to maintain control, not just over her own life, but those she affected ... of course you need two to tango ... and even more to open a dance club ... well if that dance club was euphimism for having sex that is.
While the ending has quite a strong impact (at least initially),the movie may not be as touching as it thinks it is - no pun intended. Still more than decent to say the least.
no redeeming value
High schooler Shirley Lyner (Katherine Waterston) babysits for Michael (John Leguizamo) and Gail Beltran (Cynthia Nixon). Shirley starts making out with Michael and then have sex. Michael lets out the secret to his friend and word spreads. Shirley recruits her eager friend Melissa Rowan. Next it's quiet Brenda. They start a business called The Babysitters. Brenda brings in her stepsister Nadine who starts her own competing service with other girls.
It's salacious without any redeeming value. It treats the material with no intention of being anything better. It has neither any satire nor any tension. This is not a serious treatment of this creepy subject matter. It's basically nothing. Waterston shows some interesting shades at times in this early work but there is nothing else.