"The Babysitter" is a bizarre, repetitive and often campy turkey. Most of the film consists of endless fantasy sequences that are never as steamy as they are supposed to be. A fine cast is totally wasted, especially George Segal, whose role couldn't be more pointless. This movie was misconceived all along and is worth watching only if you're curious.... (*1/2)
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BA_Harrison17 July 2015The Babysitter stars Alicia Silverstone as Jennifer, object of lust for her ineffectual bookworm boyfriend Jack (Jeremy London), colossal teenage jerk Mark (Nicky Katt), married man Harry Tucker (J.T. Walsh), and even Harry's randy pre-teen son Jimmy (Ryan Slater). As Jennifer innocently goes about her duties as a babysitter, the males fantasise about the young woman and desire eventually turns to obsession with fatal consequences.
There was a time when teenage temptress Silverstone was shaping up to be a major player in Hollywood, her role in hit teen comedy Clueless seriously boosting her bankability as an actress. But then she appeared in the abysmal Batman and Robin (as Batgirl) and pointless drivel like The Babysitter, an erotic thriller that is neither thrilling nor erotic (largely thanks to a no nudity clause in Silverstone's contract). Her star rapidly faded.
To be fair, Silverstone is perfectly adequate in her role, but the film's script goes nowhere slowly, its study of the male libido being neither enlightening (everybody knows how horny we men can be) nor all that interesting. Unappealing characters (Jennifer aside) also serve to make this film hard to endure, with wet-blanket Jack making unlikely boyfriend material for a hottie like Jennifer, Mark being a total tool, and Harry a slimy perv. Director Guy Ferland ends the film with a downer of a finale that sees one family losing a son, and another losing a father, making this not just boring but rather depressing too. -
smatysia3 March 2001Alicia Silverstone is so pretty, so good, I hope she gets some decent material someday. This film wasn't very good. Miss Silverstone was good, but the film could have really used some more exposure (wink, nod). At least she did spend a fair part of the movie in a bubble bath, but she seemed to have a flesh-colored towel in there when she was moving very much. I will have to give some credit to J. T. Walsh and Lee Garlington as the Tuckers. It was fairly fun to watch them get more and more hammered at the party. I've heard that drunkenness is difficult for an actor, but these two made it quite believable. Overall, this film is of interest only to Silverstone fans, (real ones, because she does NO nude scenes here) Grade: D
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livlover24 July 1999Yes, this movie is quite out of the ordinary, but worth a look anyway. As usual, Alicia Silverstone is in top form, this time playing an object of desire, and a feature of many fantasies to various men. Unfortunately, there is one off-putting scene where Alicia's character kisses the putrid J.T Walsh.
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SamJamie24 February 2021Jennifer (Silverstone) is a teen who has been hired to baby-sit the kids whilst The Tuckers go to a party and proceed to get inebriated, whilst Mr. Tucker fantasizes about Jennifer. Meanwhile, her boyfriend decides to spy on Jennifer at the Tucker house, with another young man also fixated on her.
Poor Alicia Silverstone, whilst she's a lovely, charming actress - she wasn't offered any good roles besides Cher in the iconic 90s comedy "Clueless" back in 1995. The same year this film was released. She seemed to settle for starring in cheap and crappy comedies or the likes of "Batman & Robin" - the less said about that the better.
"The Babysitter" seems to follow the typical 90s thriller formula along the lines of "Sleeping With The Enemy" or "Single White Female" but don't be fooled, this film is much more shallow and uninvolving. The film is practically plotless, just an excuse to show Silverstone taking a bath or cutaways to pointless fantasy scenes whilst the disgusting perverted male characters lust over her until the credits roll. This may be the sleaziest "erotic" thriller I've ever seen - despite having no eroticism or thrills.
I feel bad that Silverstone even had her name attached to this steaming pile, the film has no redeeming qualities. It's degrading to women, perverted, boring, ugly looking and pointless. Alicia deserved better! -
moonspinner558 May 2007"The Babysitter" is about as imaginative as its title (both appear to have been recycled). It's just one of a handful of low-profile movies Alicia Silverstone made before her career took off. Here, she's a solemn, sexy-in-spite-of-herself teen trying to earn some bucks by babysitting, seemingly unaware that she has male teenagers drooling and male adults fawning. Uneven drama with ham-handed flickers of surrealism. Executive produced (for some unknown reason) by Joel Schumacher, who later directed Silverstone in 1997's "Batman and Robin". This one is strictly amateur night, despite a good supporting cast including George Segal and Lois Chiles. NO STARS from ****
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raulfaust3 October 2013A suspenseful movie from the nineties is always an apparently good choice. However, it is not the case in "The Babysitter". Once the film begins, we don't know which way it is going to go, considering the characters are mysterious and directing is undecided. One character to be noticed is Mark, whose actions are questionable all the while, being very similar to Kelly from 2004's "The Girl Next Door". After 30 or 40 minutes, I started getting bored, since nothing much really happened, and I also couldn't care less about the story, given that the movie was all about everyone imagining banging with Jennifer all the time. In the end, the movie ended pointlessly and felting like a big waste of mine. Original story anyways.
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jcj4212 March 1999I don't know if I didn't "get" what the director was going for, or the director failed to deliver his vision (my vote). Although I'd watch Alicia Silverstone in an insurance info-mercial, this movie never got any steam going. Making for an amazing let down at the film's end. The story, although plausible (I certainly fantasize about Alicia Silverstone), it is pretty pointless. A good cast wasted. I can not think of a more frustrating film. All the ingredients are there: good actors, a usable plot, and a suspenseful look to the film. The damn thing never delivers. Only recommended for die-hard Alicia Silverstone or J.T.Walsh fans, just to get a fix on your favorite star.
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kevin_robbins11 October 2021The Babysitter (1995) is a movie I recently watched on Amazon Prime for the first time in a long time. The storyline involves a babysitter who is about to experience a wild night filled with sexual predators - the father of the kids she's babysitting, an aggressive admirer from her school and even her own boyfriend. Something awful seems bound to happen. This movie is directed by Guy Ferland (The Client) and stars Alicia Silverstone (Clueless), Jeremy London (Mallrats), J. T. Walsh (Slingblade) and Nicky Katt (Sin City). The storyline for this picture is pretty icky and depicts every man as a pervert essentially. There doesn't seem to be much of a point other than maybe how alcohol increases your creepiness and insecurities. The scenarios in people's heads were ridiculous and a bad premise for a movie and/or storyline. Overall this is a bad movie that really isn't worth your time. I'd score this a 2/10 and recommend skipping this.
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The Babysitter reminds me of one time when my daughter was 15, we were walking out to the car in a parking lot, and a young man probably 20 y/o or so drove by, swiveling his head as he passed. I pointed out that he had been looking, and my daughter said "Ewww! He's old!" Teenage girls think their attractiveness is like a bullet, only affecting their intended target, when in fact it's more like a hand grenade, and goes off in all directions.
The movie is different from Robert Coover's short story (Google "Robert Coover the babysitter", there's a PDF titled 184 ° Robert Coover), which was mainly a vehicle for an idea about how a story could take different plot lines as characters choose different pathways. It's not really better or worse, because it's apples and oranges.
The Babysitter is about The Male Gaze. It's about how males of all ages react to a pretty, nubile young woman who's just trying to babysit some kids, and not completely aware of her affect on males, therefore mostly indifferent to it.
Fantasies for each male, from age 10 to age 60, play out during the film, making it difficult to keep track of what's going on in reality. The screen play seems voyeuristic, as if to try to pull you into fantasizing about Silverstone yourself (if you're a male), but time and again her character shuts it down, and reveals just a regular, no-nonsense, non-sexualized person going about her business.
In the end the fantasies of three of the characters become reality, and play out as they would in real life instead of a male fantasy land, so things get messy quickly as the three disrupt their own lives within moments. Two males, the youngest and the oldest, escape perplexed but unscathed.
The end of the movie is a disaster scene, apparently with a single cause, but in reality the confluence of bad decisions by three men. The last line is like a punch line that sums up the entire proceedings of the evening. -
simondavis49 October 2004This is the first time that I have felt compelled to share my views on this site but having watched this film I felt so irritated that I had wasted an hour & a half of my life I thought I should warn anybody else who might stumble across this laughable film.
It appears that there is a reason that films are shown at 3:30 in the morning on Sky Movies & that is to try to send people to sleep. This is a tedious, nonsensical piece of tat with hysterical performances & an inane storyline. The flashback sequences (which take up most of the film) damage the flow of the film to such an extent that you end up not caring what is happening in the actual 'plot'.
Alicia Silverstone does little wrong & just tends to wander around with little on. It is a testament to the stupidity of the American film industry that any of the others were allowed to work again & it is testament to my own stupidity that I watched this piece of rubbish to the end. -
Interesting commentary on the male gaze, toxic masculinity, how alcohol fuels our baser instincts, how sex appeal and sexual prowess affect our sense of self worth. The film actively pushes the (male) viewer to participate in the same male gaze, putting Alicia Silverstone of full display, and then forces the viewer to analyze his own intentions.
The film is simultaneously dated and well ahead of its time. Reminds me a lot of Promising Young Woman, but from the male perspective. I think this film would have been perceived totally differently and done much better had it been released in 2021 rather than 1995.
This feels like the type of film I should be writing a college paper on. Worth watching, and worth analyzing and discussing. -
nam-52 April 2000The Babysitter hasn't got much in the way of a plot. It explores the mind of (but not limited to) members of the male sex at different ages. This is concerning their sexual fantasies and advances towards a beautiful young girl, both when they are sober and more so when they are drunk. The men involved include the husband, his young son, the babysitter's boyfriend and his old 'God's Gift' friend.
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ScottyB13 December 1998This movie is to be loved or hated. Loved if you are an adolescent looking for an hour of bizarre sexual fantasy with no requirement for a true plot, hated if you were looking for what could have been a good plot dealing with the danger of obsession. From the beginning, it appears that Alicia Silverstone's role in the film is to be the object of desire for a variety of male characters, from a young child to a middle aged tragic character; and therefore to be filmed as often as possible wearing as little as possible in the "dream sequence" type fantasy scenes. None of the actors was really given a chance of a stunning performance given the poor script and lack of plot which could have easily been condensed into a fifteen minute "gap-filler" for late night, low budget Television - eliminating the drawn out and tiresome first twenty minutes or so. Throughout the remainder of the film, the viewer can find it not only difficult to distinguish the fantasy scenes from the real-time scenes - but also to distinguish one scene from another as there is little variaton in the last forty minutes of the movie, which appears to be on a continuous five minute loop to the casual observer. Unfortunate to have an "18" certificate in the UK for a movie that would appeal more to the 12-15 age group. One to avoid otherwise.
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rosettarosetta3 June 2003I caught this on a boring summer afternoon on, surprise!, Lifetime. The story itself COULD be promising- an innocent teen babysitter is unwittingly the object of obsession for virtually every man she encounters in one night- but the filmmakers try to turn it into a masterpiece of surrealism that it obviously is not. The acting is pretty shallow and most of the 'fantasies' are just downright creepy, not thought provoking. The movie will leave you feeling like you just dropped a massive amount of acid. Don't waste your time.
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msdude23200027 December 2020Wow!! So slow moving ..... And just stupid. Made it half way thru and had to turn it off..... Dis this actually make it to the theaters??
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jimbo-53-1865115 February 2023I've sometimes disliked or out right hated films that are almost universally applauded in a film that I dislike so I'm glad to see that my own sentiments with this film are generally the same as many others within this community...
Let's begin by saying this film is strange....very strange... but strangeness in a film is not always a negative, but when the film is boring and lacking in any kind of momentum...well that's when it starts running in to problems...
So effectively here we have Alicia Silverstone as the babysitter (playing a sort of Lolita type). Whilst Ms Silverstone is quite alluring and ever so slightly delectable there's not much else worthy of praise within the film...
If we look at the competing parties for Lolita (sorry the babysitters affections) we have straight-laced Jack, cool street-wise Mark and more disturbingly the father of the children whom the babysitter is minding namely Harry Tucker. Through psychedelic and maniacal flashbacks the film tries to present a story from each of their perspectives (of course the film shows you what they want you to see which is far removed from the reality of what actually happens). Aside from the Babysitter, the only other person I felt a bit sorry for was Jack whom you felt that if he had just been himself that he may have got somewhere with the Babysitter (as opposed to him listening to Mark and his misguided attempts at self-confidence).
Of course there are 2 sides to a coin and looking at things from another perspective we have Dolly Tucker (whom is the wife of Harry). Whilst she puts on a strong front for most of the film, once the alcohol kicks in she shows her true colours and starts indulging in her own fantasies (at least in her own mind). All these things seem to act as a driver to what little plot there is here, but none of these arcs add up to much in the way of suspense, enjoyment or just good all round audience involvement.
To be blunt, The Babysitter is not very good plain and simple. Even the acting from everyone involved is pretty poor and at times the film has an odd theatrical feel about it. I could see what the filmmakers were trying to do here, but they made a right mess of it. -
cpu-47 June 2022What possessed the minds of everyone involved in the making of this creepy cringefest? It must have been quite a blow to Alicias career. Even though we fast-forwarded through what must have been at least half the movie, we still felt mostly bored, annoyed and disgusted (and not in fun way) rather than entertained.
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rescutia14 March 2023The story tries to focus on message that men do anything to exploit a young girl but the movie does that exact thing. I found myself cringing at the r*pe scenes because they don't make her a victim, they make her a sex thing to watch on screen. If these scenes were not in the movie the movie would be boring because the sex is the focus. The men are the main characters and they are not complex enough to be believable. The story is not well thought out. The guys break into the house, try to kill each other then one gets hit by a car? I will never watch this again and don't recommend. Alicia is great but it's unfortunate that the overall story was told in the worst way possible.
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stamper28 July 2001for the sexually frustrated. There really is no plot in this film whatsoever and I would say it is a cheap erotic film if there was any eroticism to it. This is just one stupid film. Really one to avoid. I kept hoping this would turn into a good thriller but it didn't so after an hour or so I stopped watching. This is really one to avoid. The main characters are dumb and horny (the male ones that is). No plot, no action no thrills, no scares NO GOOD.
3 out of 10 -
The Babysitter is about this beautiful babysitter(Alicia Silverstone) that everybody adores and has every day fantasies about her. One night, while she is babysitting for the Tucker family, her boyfriend Jack(Jeremy London), her ex boyfriend Mark(Nicky Katt), and Mr.Tucker(J.T Walsh), all want to seduce the babysitter and make their fantasies come true. The plot was alright, i mean, the fantasies were pretty realistic in some way. We all have them at some point. But it gets kinda boring and predictable after a while and the babysitter turns into nothing special. I would give The Babysitter 6/10
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generationofswine22 February 2020Well, Alicia Silverstone does a good job. Have to give her that.
But, this is pretty much "The Crush" only with a much worse cast, a slightly different plot that still follows the lolita theme, and a the worst possible execution possible.
I believe the plot summary is that a man and his children all have a thing for the babysitter... and that is just about all you need to know.
Films like this you expect tension, something that keeps you on the edge of your seat and makes a knot in the muscles on your back. Tension that is both sexual and fatal.
Instead it pushes for an eroticism that is never really achieved and any feelings of peril are absolutely void. The cover suggests enough, but in the end the mood never gets there enough to make it an enjoyable watch. -
Contact-628 July 1999Most people thought this movie sucked. I guess they just couldn't get into like I did. Let me ask you this, and answer honestly. Did this movie intrigue you? Were you anxious to know what would happen next? If you answered yes, then this movie delivered on one of its purposes and you can't say it totally sucked. I personally was fascinated by the original narration, and the depiction of carachters as seen by the world, and how, because of the filmakers, we get to see them how they really are, on the inside. All three of the main carachters were connected with their obsession with the babysitter. I was very interested on how their mere fantasies would move their actions through the movie. I was also in suspense, wanting to know how the three competing actors would face eachother during the climax of the movie. And how the repurcussions would be with their lives. Another interesting is how more and more intense their fantasies get, they evolve as they get more obsessed on the babysitter. You can feel the tension rising as the fantasies get stronger, and where they no longer decide to keep it just that.
SPOILER
The ending, I have to say, is a let down. It had nothing to do with the rest of the story, while I expected there would be a big conflict to settle things, i was dissapointed. Still, not too terrible.
SPOILER END
In general, a very intense,suspenseful, psychological thriller. I really like it. -
Supposedly "steamy" thriller is adapted by director Guy Ferland from the story by Robert Coover. It basically functions as a vehicle for then up and comer Alicia Silverstone, cast as the title character. She's a high school student sitting for middle aged couple Harry and Dolly Tucker (J.T. Walsh and Lee Garlington), who have three kids. She inspires fantasies in not only the lecherous, drunken Harry but her estranged boyfriend Jack (Jeremy London) and his shady associate Mark (Nicky Katt). Even her male charge Jimmy (Ryan Slater, Christians' kid brother) gets in on the act.
This should have made for a more watchable experience, but it fails to be all that interesting, whether it follows the activities of the aimless youth or the weary older generation. There are so many fantasy sequences that viewers may feel challenged to keep track of when the film is actually showing "reality". Also, people may feel cheated that Silverstone isn't showcased to sexier effect. Apparently, she wouldn't do this film until the nude scenes were cut. Adding to that problem is the fact that her character (not to mention most of the characters here) just isn't that compelling.
This impressive cast certainly has worked with better material. One does feel embarrassed for the late, great Walsh. Garlington has a somewhat meaty role as his wife who is despondent over not being more desirable to her worthless husband. George Segal and Lois Chiles, as their friends throwing the party that they attend, have precious little to do. Too much time is spent with London and the amusingly smarmy Katt as they prowl around the Tucker home, and it takes the film too long to get going.
Fans wanting a Silverstone fix would be better off revisiting "Clueless" or even "The Crush".
Six out of 10. -
biancaofthecaribbean22 August 2014Absolutely one of the WORST movies I've ever watched. Pointless is the word. Utterly pointless. The movie follows one night at the Tucker home where we find Alicia Silverstone's character having a rather uneventful night babysitting two kids: Jimmy and Bitsy. The movie is about... well.... three horny and drunk men having fantasies about having sex with the babysitter. But that's all it is.... FANTASIES! DAYDREAMING! IMAGINING! If only this movie spent more time on actual events rather than imagining alone, maybe it would have had a shot at 2/10 rating. But this junk deserves -0. This movie is listed under "psychological thriller" on Netflix. The only thing 'The Babysitter' did was psychologically bore me and thrillingly annoy me. I want my 90 minutes back.