A pathetic excuse to trot out a procession of teenage girls in the raw, performing graphic simulated sex acts with your basic suburban family man drooling all over himself.
Comment
05/17/08
The Babysitters (2008)
28 %
Reviews Counted: 25 Fresh: 7 Rotten:18 Average Rating: 4.3/10
Consensus:
Though built on an audacious and controversial premise, Babysitters teeters between exploitation and grossness due to uneven execution.
Runtime: 90 mins
Synopsis: In this dark comedy, Shirley Lyner (Katherine Waterston) may be just 16 years old, but she's smart. However, instead of just using her intelligence to get into college, she's started her own business that may help pay her way through school. She discovers that babysitters can make more money... [More]
Genre: Comedies
Starring: John Leguizamo, Katherine Waterston, Cynthia Nixon, Andy Comeau, Denis O'Hare
Director: David Ross
Screenwriter: David Ross
Producer: John Leguizamo, Kathy DeMarco, Cora Olson, Jennifer Dubin, Jason Dubin
Composer: Chad Fischer
Screenwriter: David Ross
Producer: John Leguizamo, Kathy DeMarco, Cora Olson, Jennifer Dubin, Jason Dubin
Composer: Chad Fischer
Reviews
It's bad enough that writer-director David Ross indulges in the very perverse kind of Lolita-tinged titillation the film pretends to lament, but then he ties everything up with an oh-well shrug.
05/16/08
Until it crosses a shadowy line dividing serious comedy from distasteful exploitation, The Babysitters has the makings of an incisive satire of greed and lust in suburbia.
05/09/08
Top Critic
David Ross's stylishly tawdry black comedy fits neatly between Heathers and American Beauty. The Babysitters Club this ain't.
05/09/08
The script has a stale air, like something that was doing the rounds for a long time before David Ross found backers to make a film out of it.
05/09/08
Although the film is pitched as dark comedy, there's nothing very funny about the sexualization of teenagers.
05/09/08
I'd call it a depressing soft-core porn flick, but that overstates its titillation factor. Mainly it's just icky.
05/09/08
It reads like a Cinemax special event, and as good as Leguizamo and Waterston (daughter of Sam) are, the skeevy, fantasy-fulfillment plot that drives David Ross' movie is uncomfortably risky business.
05/09/08
The film remains engaging in no small part because of the beguiling and enigmatic performance of [Katherine] Waterston, daughter of Law & Order star Sam Waterston.
05/09/08
Top Critic
You can see the potential in this off-kilter coming-of-age story, and it's a pity it never quite adds up.
05/09/08
Despite the racy content and the alarmist 18A classification, The Babysitters is a remarkably restrained and decent film. It's polished, smoothly edited and shot with simple elegance.
05/09/08
Is Ross trying to mimic Michael Haneke, daring his audience to be disgusted by the very titillating premise which probably brought them to the movie in the first place?
05/08/08
Like the pilot for an awful, misguided joint venture between FX and the CW.
05/08/08
There's little real wit here and, as far as teen-chick antics go, it's definitely no Heathers or Clueless, not even Cruel Intentions.
05/08/08
The premise is out of '70s porn, and so is the overbroad satire and almost total lack of conviction.
05/07/08
By undermining the subtle feminism of his movie, [director] Ross ends up undermining the whole thing, culminating in a terrifying parking-lot scene that doesn’t quite make sense.
05/07/08
Like television’s Six Feet Under and the recent film Juno, it’s the perfect antidote to the dopey, butter-cream-frosted teen flicks of John Hughes -- Pretty in Pink with poison sauce.
05/07/08
Daddies, don't let your daughters grow up to be babysitters, because according to The Babysitters, it's a gateway to whoredom.
05/07/08
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