Review of Adventures in Babysitting (1987) by Dian A — 26 Dec 2009

Director Chris Columbus has always been keen to directing films with a "lighter" sense and I've never actually cared for his work that much, he tends to achieve what he wants but never gives an extra effort to make an astounding flick (although I do quite enough his Harry Potter installments) so it was interesting to his debut.

Adventures In Babysitting is undoubtfully silly, and trys to string together a bunch of wild fun scenes into a realistic plot and for the most part it works. What makes the film amusing is that is one othe "80's" films that can be studied to understand the pop culture at that time. With enough presentation of clothing, and mentionings of icons it does get you into that feel of the 80's. However, this is a film made from the 80's so that point is entirely trivial but I just wanted to state why I got enough of a kick out of it.

Columbus is an interesting director to observe rather then to admire, as stated earlier he does work on a decent level but you can get that feeling he just wants to create scenes. There's this sequence where they sing a blues song at a bar, it's corny as hell but manages to be fun.

That last sentence basically summarizes the entire flick, it basically brings you into a fun time (being a teenager now-a-days it's always interesting to see what times did back then), even if it's a Columbus flick.

I did end up watching this with several people who had grown up on the flick so it was understandable why they overly enjoy it, a mildly amusing film that should be watched with a couple of friends, preferably late at night.