The Babysitters (2007)

Initially when I heard about The Babysitters, I thought of Risky Business with Tom Cruise in it, but upon watching it, I realised the two movies are very different. Risky Business was tinged with humor throughout but The Babysitters takes a very dark look at teens, sex, drugs and middle-aged men, a combustible combination indeed.

The movie begins with a bunch of nubile teen girls in compromising positions with middle-aged men, and a commentary by the lead actress [Katherine Waterston] who plays Shirley. We know the movie is going to be rather dark when Shirley casually makes the observance that "paid fellatio" is not much different than flipping burgers.

Turns out Shirley is a financially-challenged honors student who babysits to earn extra money and meets a couple Gail [ Cynthia Nixon] and Mike [John Leguizamo] who have two children. Mike is a middle-aged executive who finds his wife rather boring and unadventurous, and whilst driving Shirley home one night, they 'bond'. A kiss results in a heavy tip for Shirley, and soon the pair are engaged in a hot affair, the first encounter netting Shirley $200. The bright young woman decides this is the path to financial freedom, and is soon not only making money hooking on the side with Mike and other like-minded guys but also pimping out her similar-minded classmates, charging a 20% levy on each of her 'girls' transaction.

What appears to be an easy ride turns difficult and dangerous when greed and rivalry amongst the girls turns life into a spiralling nightmare for Shirley.

Katherine Waterston [daughter of Sam Waterston of Law & Order] does an amazing job in her role as the enterprising teen Shirley, though I did find her sudden chameleon-like change from virginal teen to teen nymphet and madam hard to swallow [pun intended]. John Leguizamo's performance as Mike was well-done, though his sex scenes with Waterston were unconvincing. Cynthia Nixon's dumpy wife role truly wasted her talents and didn't elicit much sympathy for her character. Another stand-out performance was by Halley Wegryn Gross who plays Nadine, another of Shriley's girls.

Overall, I found the movie an above-average attempt at addressing the darker side of high school students' lives, the pressures they face etc, but I felt the movie did not truly spend time on character development and plot cohesion.Final verdict: a dark drama dealing with teen vice and angst.

this movie certainly had a lot to offer but came out short. if you're going to make a adult-themed movie, then go for it. having sex scenes with everyone fully clothed does nothing for the movie. it's not my main complaint or major concern, but it is more distracting than anything. i doubt if teenagers are that organized or can keep a secret especially with all the business, money and backstabbing that was going on. their business would of collapsed long before it did. and it would not only be the kids that noticed high buck jewerly and clothes on them. i really don't think the leguizamo character would really have the caring and feelings he did. i didn't think much of the acting or characters played. and yes, common sense giving teenagers drugs and alcohol will come back to haunt you. nothing really happened, which i'm sure is a relief to the characters. if this movie would have been made in any other nonpolitically correct decade, it might have been done differently.

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This movie is rather average, characters forgettable, director's work let's call it unobtrusive, so at best it should be given 3 stars, so why did I give it four?

Precisely because it's so average and normal.

In this movie Shirley, a student in a nice clean high school in a nice clean American suburb organizes her classmates into a prostitution ring, well functioning, smooth and efficient American business.

The movie starts with Shirley, actually a honors student, babysitting for a neighboring family. When the husband, Mike [John Leguizamo], gives her a ride back home, they kiss, and he gives her a rather heavy tip.

Soon we find him giving her tips for very different services, which she offers without much ado. Money is very prominent in the film from the very beginning to the very end, because Shirley, while her family is far from poor, doesn't have much money herself, and needs some income of her own that's why she is babysitting in the first place.

But for her sexual services she, apparently, gets paid much better than for babysitting, and, as she says herself in the movie, "paid fellatio is not much more humiliating than flipping burgers". Amazingly, this is talking a nice clean girl from nice, clean American suburbia, not an underclass, deprived girl from some inner city slums.

But the film gives us much more than this. Once Shirley is established in her new role, one day she tells her friend, her classmate, about this small business she has on a side, and her classmate becomes interested, she needs extra money too. Shirley asks her "customer" Mike if any of his friends might be interested in similar kind of service. Or maybe it's Mike who asks her if she has any classmates who could "babysit" for his buddies.

Soon Shirley's business is growing, she adds new customers, and her classmates willingly provide them with quality service. There're some conflicts, but those are of purely business nature: Shirley charges classmates a fee for providing them with clients, and some girls don't want to pay, or they don't want to pay enough this kind of conflict, nothing personal. No moral torments.

Girls counting money are shown in this film more than once, and it is pretty much as sexually explicit as this film goes.

Lord Of the Flies, where a group of boys is left without adults on an island, shows how easy human morals are going away when children are left unsupervised.

No remote uninhabited islands in Babysitters.

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After about half an hour, the viewer can predict the outcome. What is not so transparent is the development of the two central, and one or two peripheral, characters.

Note of a moral nature: this movie (like numerous others that primarily aim to shock in order to motivate a kind of moral reflection that is valuable in itself, films such as 'American Beauty', 'Magnolia', 'Bad Education', '13 Tzametti', 'Perdita Durango' and 'Natural Born Killers') raises the question: "Will its release encourage morally reprehensible behavior?" My answer would be "Maybe." Not much of an answer, but perhaps this is something troubling, and perhaps public debates on such subject matter as one encounters in this film wouldn't be a bad idea. I can understand some peoples' less-than-favourable response to this film. After all, teen prostitution isn't the world's healthiest practice, both physically AND psychologically. Anyway. What about the non-normative aspects of the film (which warrant discussion in themselves)?

Leguizamo is versatile, and this movie provides further evidence of said trait. Nixon fans might be disappointed insofar as her role is a minor one, with little investigation of the character she plays. But Leguizamo, his love interest (Waterston), and the other 'babysitters' (esp. 'Brenda') are given some serious attention. Of special mention are a few aspects of Waterston's character that make for a more interesting story than would otherwise have been the case.

Not an easy film to watch. Makes one wonder how exaggerated the story actually is. Overall, entertaining, superior acting, interesting plot. But note moral caveat above.

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It could be said that this movie is a lesson on considering every angle before embarking on a new endeavor. In this case, the girls realized they could make money by having sex under the guise of baby-sitting, but eventually things get out of control in ways that make it not worth even the good money. What seems like it is going to be easy money turns difficult and dangerous. Avarice and typical teen girl rivalry among the group turns life into a treacherous nightmare for Shirley. The movie gets four stars instead of five because I am not sure a girl as 'innocent' as Shirley could turn into such a ruthless Madame in such a short time. There is nudity (teen breasts) and some bad language and drugs, but less than one would expect in such a movie.

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