Adventures in Babysitting (1987)
Directed by Chris Columbus
When plans with her boyfriend fall through, high school senior Chris Parker ends up babysitting the Anderson kids, Brad and Sara. What should be a quiet night in, however, turns into a series of ridiculous exploits, starting when they leave the house to pick up Chris' friend Brenda. Soon, Brad's buddy Daryl is involved, and the group must contend with car thieves, blues musicians and much more.
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What critics compared Adventures in Babysitting to
Despite Condor’s determination to make Lara Jean feel like a real girl — albeit with distracting false eyelashes — she’s stuck being a clone, opening the film crooning “And Then He Kissed Me” to her bedroom mirror just as Elisabeth Shue did in “Adventures in Babysitting.”
It’s only fitting that a franchise that so pulls so liberally from its ’80s-era predecessors — no other teen movie has made such a meal out of heart-eyed teens throwing their hands in the paramour’s back pockets since, of course, “16 Candles” — kicks off with a bopping tribute to “Adventures in Babysitting,” as Lara Jean dances around to “And Then He Kissed Me,” a la Elizabeth Shue.
I Still Love You tries to further subvert the genre while still paying homage to the classics right from the jump: The opening scene finds Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor) mimicking the iconic opening of Adventures in Babysitting.
The formula has been executed oodles of times before, of course, and it’s flexible enough to accommodate different tones: overt nostalgia trips like American Graffiti (1973) and Dazed and Confused (1993), for example, or faintly fantastical nocturnal odysseys like Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004).
It’s a funny, silly journey, complete with vulgar jokes and ridiculous supporting characters (Lourd steals every scene she’s in), following a template that recalls everything from Dazed and Confused to Superbad to Adventures in Babysitting .
"Sex Tape" sets itself up as a zany, "up-all-night" comedy-adventure in the tradition of 1987's endlessly entertaining "Adventures in Babysitting" and 2010's smartly funny, romantically resonant " Date Night ," but then does surprisingly little with its premise.
If the narrative had been positioned in a slightly different way, it could have resembled something like "After Hours" or maybe "Adventures in Babysitting" – a seemingly impossible scenario, stretched out across an endless night, with increasing levels of danger or unpredictability.
Onward reminded me more of '80s pleasures like The Goonies and Adventures in Babysitting.
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There’s a sort of Adventures in Babysitting vibe to the boys’ conflict with a pair of teenage girls who steal the drone the boys have been using to spy on them (in order to learn about kissing, of course).
Absent from films for quite a while while he starred in Broadway's Tony Award Winner, "Rent," it is nice to see Anthony Rapp (1987's "Adventures in Babysitting") again, this time playing a creepy Ithaca student who grows progressively jealous of Josh when Beth is stolen from his grasp (nevermind that she has no interest at all in him, anyway).
Screenwriter Mark Perez (Accepted, Herbie Fully Loaded) has engineered a deliciously anarchic scenario that plays out like the haphazard, devil-may-care composite of fellow subversively absurdist comedies like Into the Night, Adventures in Babysitting, Risky Business, After Hours and Date Night, while directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein handle all the chaos and calamity with confidence and flair.
Adventures in Babysitting and Date Night , both pleasant romps about likable suburbanites’ caught up in the inner city after hours, might be more their speed.
The first two attempts to bring Rowling's work to the big screen--Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets--were both directed by Chris Columbus, the corporate sentimentalist who gave us such explorations of contemporary domesticity as Stepmom, Mrs. Doubtfire, Adventures in Babysitting, and the Home Alone movies.
For no other reason than the fact that the directorial reins of the Harry Potter series have been passed from the hands of Chris Columbus, as mild and unthreatening of a filmmaker as you could possibly imagine (besides the first two "Potter" films, he also directed the first two "Home Alone" movies, "Bicentennial Man" and "Adventures in Babysitting"), to Alfonso Cuaron, who received considerable acclaim for such bold works as the visually sumptuous "A Little Princess" and "Y Tu Mama Tambien", critics have been describing "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" as being the "darkest" entry of the series.
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The opening sequence is right out of Adventures in Babysitting with our protagonist, Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) who is leaving to study fashion in London, lip-synching cutesily around her bedroom to an old fashioned song.
You maybe want to see a movie where these odd-couple cops can solve a daffy crime, or where Vicky (standout Virginia Gardner) can go on her Adventures In Babysitting, accompanied by her sweet stoner boyfriend and spirited, cursing charge Julian (Jibrail Nantambu).