Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Film Appreciation - A Lifetime of Fun in Just One Night

Cody Hamman shares Film Appreciation for Adventures in Babysitting (1987).

I don’t remember the first time I watched Adventures in Babysitting. It’s one of those movies that was always just there. A part of my life. It was given a theatrical release in the summer of 1987, at which time I was just 3 years old, so it probably would have reached VHS when I was 4. It was probably rented for me to watch while it was a new release. I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that the movie became a favorite of mine from the moment I first watched it, and I packed a whole lot of viewings into my childhood. I likely caught airings on cable, and I know I rented the VHS repeatedly. I have a particularly strong memory of renting it from one of the long-gone rental sources I miss the most, a place called Harvey’s Market. Where VHS boxes were kept on wooden shelves with numbered, circular tags nailed into the wood below them. If the tag was gone, someone had rented the movie. If the tag was still there, it was up for grabs. Take the tag to the clerk and they’d give you the VHS in a kind of orange-brown plastic case, a sort of case I never encountered at any other video store.

Directed by Chris Columbus from a screenplay by David Simkins, this movie that entertained me and captured my imagination throughout my youth stars Elisabeth Shue of The Karate Kid as 17-year-old Chris Parker, who is introduced while she excitedly gets ready for her anniversary date with her “so cool” boyfriend Mike (Bradley Whitford), dancing and lip syncing to the song “Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals – so we already like her before she has even spoken one line of dialogue. Then we’re on her side when Mike shows up at her door, wearing his everyday clothes, to break their date plans because he has to stay home and take care of his sick little sister. He won’t even give Chris a kiss as he leaves, because, “contagious.” 

Chris is, understandably, depressed by this turn of events. But her evening is also open now, so she agrees to babysit 8-year-old Sara Anderson, played by Maia Brewton... and this is a character that really helped me connect with this movie when I was a kid. Not just because she was the youngest of the bunch (but still older than me at the time), but also because she idolizes the Marvel Comics character Thor. Her bedroom is a Thor museum, she draws pictures of him, she wears the character’s winged helmet, she wields his hammer Mjolnir. Thor was never a favorite of mine, even though my father ended up having a Thor-inspired tattoo years later, but I have been a Marvel fan for as long as I can remember. So it was cool to see a young Marvel fan like me in a movie, long before Marvel film adaptations became big business.

Sara has a 15-year-old brother named Brad, played by Keith Coogan. Brad was supposed to be spending the night with his horndog buddy Daryl Coopersmith (Anthony Rapp), but he has a major crush on Chris. So when he finds out Chris is going to be at their home, watching Sara, he decides to stay home and hang around Chris. But Chris isn’t at their home for very long. Soon after the Anderson parents have left to attend a business event in downtown Chicago, which is thirty minutes away, Chris receives a phone call from her friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller). Brenda doesn’t get along with her stepmom and has decided to run away from home... but she has only gotten as far as a Chicago bus station before running out of money. Now she’s stuck at the bus station, which is full of rats and people who seem to be mental patients, and needs Chris to come pick her up. Chris intends to make a one hour round trip to rescue her friend and leave Sara at home with Brad while she’s out – but Sara and Brad insist on going into the city with her. And Daryl, who is carrying around an issue of Playboy that features a centerfold who resembles Chris, invites himself along as well.

It’s not an hour long round trip. Chris’s mom’s car gets a flat tire on the way and things continue to go downhill from there. They don’t have a spare tire, so they get a ride from a hook-handed tow truck driver who gets distracted by his mission to murder his wife’s lover. With bullets flying around them, they seek shelter in another car – which is being stolen by Joe Gipp, played by Calvin Levels. Joe is a nice guy, but he makes the questionable decision to take Chris and the kids to a chop shop, where crime boss Bleak (John Chandler) and his right hand man Graydon (Ron Canada) don’t take kindly to their presence. They get more upset when Daryl, who has lost his Playboy along the way, steals their copy, which has their business plans written down on the centerfold. With no transportation and criminals on their tail, Chris and the kids have to navigate their way through Chicago, avoid danger, save Brenda, and get Chris’s mom’s car back. This adventure takes them through a blues club (where Chris has to come up with a blues song, “Babysitting Blues,” on the spot), onto the L train (where they’re caught between knife-wielding rival gang members), to a hospital, a restaurant (where Mike is on a date with someone else), through a frat party, into – and outside – the skyscraper that was then known as the Associates Center, and to Dawson’s Garage, where the owner is played by Vincent D'Onofrio and may or may not be Thor.

Despite having youngsters in lead roles, Adventures in Babysitting has a bit of a harder edge than the average kid-friendly movie from Disney – or, in this case, a Disney subsidiary, Touchstone. After all, it was the first Disney movie to get a PG-13 rating. There’s gunfire, a minor stabbing, sex jokes, nudity-free glimpses at the Playboy, and a couple of F-bombs. One of those F-bombs even comes in the film’s most famous line. But I was an ‘80s kid who was watching slasher movies at the age of 3, so this stuff didn’t strike me as anything out-of-the-norm when I was watching the movie as a child. I would just sit back and have a blast watching this likeable group of characters go on the adventure of their young lives.

With fun scenarios, amusing lines, and a great display of Marvel fandom, Adventures in Babysitting is a movie I have always enjoyed watching... and I have been watching it frequently for more than thirty-five years at this point. Over that time, as I have aged, the movie hasn’t lost any of its entertainment factor. In fact, it has gained something over the years: nostalgia factor, because now every time I watch it, my mind goes back to my earlier viewings. When I was a kid, watching a rented VHS copy of the film from Harvey’s Market. It’s always nice to experience something that can mentally transport you back to the simpler days of your life.

‘80s, ‘90s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, I have had appreciation for Adventures in Babysitting all this time, and it’s not going away.

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