Tagline: These girls mean business.
A 16-year-old turns her babysitting service into a call-girl ring for married men after she begins an affair with a customer. High school senior Shirley works as a babysitter to save money for college. She has a serious crush on Michael, father of two of her regular charges. One night, Michael and Shirley share a forbidden kiss, and he gives her a nice bonus on top of her regular babysitting fee.
After Michael’s married buddies find out and want in on the babysitter action, Shirley becomes a high-school madam, arranging dates between her girlfriends and the family men of their neighborhood with her trusty black book. An innocent flirtation soon spirals into an affair that causes everyone involved to lose more than they bargained for.
Michael Beltran has a different outlook on life. The father of two, Michael married Gail, the ‘party-girl’ who turned out to be the responsible one in the family. He works a job he doesn’t like, misses the occasional AA meeting, and longs for a little of the excitement he used to know.
When Michael drives Shirley home from babysitting the first night, they both find something they need in each other. Michael wants someone, anyone, to think of him as fascinating and funny and vital. Shirley wants someone to think of her as grown up. But, as Shirley says, as soon as one thing is out of place, it throws everything out of whack, and when a stolen kiss is returned both Shirley and Michael set in motion a series of events fatally destined to crash.
For Michael, guilt over the kiss leads him to overpay Shirley for her babysitting services. For Shirley, what she doesn’t admit she can’t regret, so she puts the money away with the rest of her college fund. When a friend of Michael’s wants the same experience and Shirley’s best friend is willing to “baby-sit” Shirley sees it as a simple matter of supply and demand…and a way to make twenty percent off the top.
But sex is never as easy as stamping “services paid”, and love to a teenage girl doesn’t mean the same as lust to a middle aged man. So while “business” is soon booming, so too are greed, envy and jealousy threatening to spiral Shirley’s carefully constructed world wildly out of control.
A movie about the contradictions that drive our daily choices, The Babysitters stars John Leguizamo, Katherine Waterston, and Cynthia Nixon. Produced by John Leguizamo, Kathy Demarco Cora Olson, Jennifer Dubin Jason Dubin, The Babysitters is written and directed by David Ross.
Review
From High School Student to Ruthless Madam
Until it crosses a shadowy line dividing serious comedy from distasteful exploitation, “The Babysitters” has the makings of an incisive satire of greed and lust in suburbia. Katherine Waterston (a daughter of Sam) portrays Shirley Lyner, a cool-headed high school honors student and baby sitter who stumbles into an affair with her employer, Michael Beltran (a miscast John Leguizamo).
A middle-aged advertising executive who feels guilty about their first stolen kiss while taking her home, Michael overtips her. When they eventually have sex, he gives her $200. This paves the way for the enterprising Shirley to enlist her best friend, Melissa (Lauren Birkell), as a “baby sitter” for Michael’s pal Jerry (Andy Comeau). Before long Shirley is running a teenage prostitution ring and demanding 20 percent of her girls’ earnings.
Her business is threatened by Nadine (Halley Wegryn Gross), a new recruit who balks at paying Shirley a percentage and steals her clients, and by the emotional instability of Nadine’s half sister, Brenda (Louisa Krause), who begins to come apart after being given Ecstasy at a weekend orgy. As the war escalates, the director, David Ross, loses control of his volatile material, which eventually blows up in his face.
Shirley’s instant metamorphosis from insecure high school student to ruthless madam is ludicrous in spite of the best efforts of the talented Ms. Waterston to convince you otherwise. “The Babysitters” has the increasingly jerky momentum of a film that was butchered in the cutting room, sacrificing continuity and character development to whip the plot forward. And Cynthia Nixon is wasted in the role of Michael’s prim wife, Gail.
The plaintive story of Michael’s unhappy marriage to a once-wild woman is all but buried under the movie’s unsavory portrait of shame-faced middle-aged men drooling over under-age nubile flesh.
Production notes provided by Peace Arch Entertainment.
The Babysitters
Starring: John Leguizamo, Katherine Waterston, Cynthia Nixon, Lauren Birkell, Alexandra Daddario, Kim Shaw, Andi Potamkin
Directed by: David Ross
Screenplay by: David Ross
Release Date: May 9th, 2008
MPAA Rating: R for disturbing strong sexual content, language and some drug use – involving teens.
Box Office: $44,852 (US total)
Studio: Peace Arch Entertainment
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $44,852 (100.0%)
Foreign: —
Total: $44,852 (Worldwide)