Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

Adventures in Babysitting arrived in the summer of 1987 as the directorial debut of Chris Columbus, and it has aged into a modest cult fixture on the strength of Elisabeth Shue's amiability and one genuinely good blues number. As a document of social consciousness it is nearly inert. There is no environmental messaging, no economic critique, no engagement with body image, neurodivergence, or the rewriting of history. The film concerns a station wagon, a flat tire, and a series of escalating inconveniences. That is the whole of its ambition.

On representation, the ledger is thin. The cast is white to a degree that barely registers as a decision, and the Black performers who appear (Calvin Levels as the car thief Joe Gipp, Albert Collins fronting the blues band) exist inside the South Side sequence as local color. Roger Ebert noted this at the time, observing that the film had good raw material and left it unrealized. The blues club scene is the picture's best, and it treats its musicians as atmosphere. Anthony Rapp appears as Daryl, and the film's lone gesture toward queer content is a slur, which Disney+ now scrubs from its streaming copy. That is a curiosity of censorship, not a theme.

Shue's Chris is competent and drives the plot, which earns a flicker of credit, though the film proposes nothing about gender and never intends to. Gene Siskel faulted the movie for a lack of social awareness, a fair reading and also beside the point. This is a caper. It wants to be Ferris Bueller with a curfew, and it mostly is. The absence of a sermon is, in the end, its most distinguishing feature.