THE QUEST FOR THE MOST ’90s FILM OF ALL TIME
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead

I haven’t read Moby Dick. I haven’t seen Gone with the Wind. I haven’t ever been to Europe. But, because my grandma had HBO during the summer of 1992, I have seen Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead about five times. I’ve learned to live with regrets.

STARS/PERFORMANCES 
Actors Who Are Unquestionably Tied to the Decade- Christina Applegate [+10]
Directed by famed studio hack Stephen Herek, Don’t Tell Mom was a June starring vehicle for Christina Applegate, who had been the standout of Married with Children and my pre-pubescent dreams. In a time before women tweezed their eyebrows, she plays the selfish, recently-graduated eldest sister of an unruly family. We get some quick and obvious expository dialogue that defines the situation—“I wish Dad was around!” [+1]—and the characters’ roles—“Kenny, you haven’t cleaned your room in weeks, the lawn needs to be mowed, and your room is a disaster!” [+2]. Then the mother goes on an Australian vacay for two months, and Applegate and her siblings are stuck with a demanding hag of a babysitter. That is, until a series of contrivances (and criminal negligence), kills the babysitter and Applegate has to become the woman of the house.

- Other Notable Actors/Characters- Josh Charles [+3], David Duchonvny [+3]
So either Applegate or her deadbeat, metalhead brother has to get a job, and they decide that she’ll be the career gal. She starts at Clown Dog, where she slings hash with scruffy love interest Josh Charles. He convinces her to quit and FOLLOW HER DREAMS on her first day of work [+1], and, with fake resume in hand, she snags an executive position at a clothing company. Since, you know, the boss lady doesn’t call any of her references and hires her—giving her the key to petty cash [+1]—without so much as a formal interview [+5].* Seventeen-year-old girl having trouble with a fax machine alert! [+3]

Anyway, bad move on Josh Charles’ part, since, without his big mouth, he could have spent an entire summer working next to Christina Applegate. But he ends up wooing her anyway, and he becomes the romantic subplot of the film. He and Applegate have interesting chemistry, and those scenes are legitimately sweet—easily the best the otherwise forgettable film has to offer. There’s even a romantic scene underneath the pier, which is not a creepy place to go on a first date at all [+2].

Oh, and Duchovs:


TECHNOLOGY/CULTURAL RELICS
- Could the Plot Reasonably Occur with Current Technology?
No. [+10] In this film, the mom goes to Australia and leaves a number “just in case,” since a phone call to Australia would be super-expensive. Mom leaves money with the babysitter, and the babysitter has that cash on her person when the kids dispose of her body. So the kids can’t get in touch with their across-the-world mom, and they have no money. That drives the whole plot.

Today, I’m pretty sure you would constantly be in touch with your mom—sending her a “plse hlp kthx” E-Mail at least—and she could wire you the money as soon as you need it. That is, if you needed physical money in the first place, since she would have left you with a credit card. Background checks on a seventeen-year-old applying for a prestigious job would have been much easier too.


Buy stock in America Online. You’ll never work at Clown Dog again.

- Hacking/Computers
Applegate—the character’s name is Sue Ellen, but Applegate is such a fun name—uses a typewriter at home [+1], but her work computer—green-and-black monitor stylo [+1]—has Lotus and Wordstar [+2].

-Other
Old girl has a clear, cordful telephone in her room [+1], not to mention a Walkman [+1]. The family’s “state-of-the-art” entertainment center still has a TV with an antenna, VHS, and hi-fi stereo equipment [+5].  The soda Tab is mentioned [+1], and someone has California Raisins bedsheets [+1]. Plus, a kid shoots the grandma the bird? I don’t know. Seems ’90s to me [+1].

Sue Ellen’s brother is a metalhead, which is a movie shorthand that doesn’t even exist anymore [+3]. The ripped jeans, the Iron Maiden posters—it used to be so easy to communicate a stock character. And he and his friends use slang that is just made-up. At one point, a guy called Lizard [+1] says, “Park it yourself, Metallica-breath” [+1]. I’m pretty sure you’re just stringing words together at this point, Neil Landau and Tara Ison.

There’s also a whole lot of smoking in this movie [+3]. This seventeen-year-old girl wantonly smokes in front of her mother, and everyone lights up inside of restaurants and offices. Applegate is like Don Draper with worse eyebrows. It’s surprising how much attitudes toward cigarettes have changed in the past twenty years.

The manipulative, synth-heavy score is godawful, and there are Twilight Zone and Psycho music cues at key points. No one seems to do this anymore, probably because of the cost-prohibitive rights to those pieces of music. Not to mention that kids might not recognize the Twilight Zone theme anymore. [+3]

FASHION

Homeless clown steez to infinity. Max. [+15]

’90s FILM CONVENTIONS
Cleaning the House Montage [+3]
Career Gal Montage [+3]

Actors in Their Mid-Twenties Playing High School Kids [+5]

As a Character Gets More Mature, He Starts Dressing Better [+5]- One of the oldest tricks in the book. As the metalhead starts to take care of his brothers and sisters and think about going to college, he cuts his hair and puts on a pair of khakis. Yep, problem solved. Good kid now. No need to call his references.

Animated Opening Credits Sequence [+5]- No good movie has ever started with an animated credits sequence. If this is how a movie starts, leave the theater. Check out the nominees for Best Picture right now. Do you think David Fincher deliberated over whether or not Zuckerberg should be bouncing on a skateboard through a candy-colored Harvard Square? Probably not. Do you think Gone with the Wind starts with a wacky caricature of Rhett Butler? I don’t know. It might. Haven’t seen it.

OTHER
Oscar-winner Davis Guggenheim is credited as an associate producer [+1]. Which, in Hollywood, probably means this was all his idea, someone else stole it, and he could only halfway prove it in arbitration.

To further complicate matters after the babysitter dies, a band of drag queens steal the kids’ car outside of a Chuck E. Cheese [+1]. The fact that they are drag queens—and the kids’ reaction to drag queens—seems non sequitur, and 2011 logic dictates that there must be a deleted scene that explains their presence. In 1991 though, it just didn’t make sense [+3].

Ladies and gentlemen, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead’s final score is 107. It is the first film to break the century mark and, so far, the Most ’90s Film of All-Time.

*- Okay, the plot needs for this to happen. I get it. But the Vice President of Operations of a fashion line wouldn’t at least ask some questions like, “It says here that you worked at Comme Des Garcons in Tokyo. Do you speak Japanese?” or even: “It says you interned at Vogue. What did you do there?” I had to do three interviews to be a camp counselor, but I guess I don’t look like Christina Applegate. And yeah, I paused the movie to read the character’s fake resume. We’ll all die alone.