Adventures in Babysitting [A Night on the Town] ** (1987, Elisabeth Shue, Vincent D’Onofrio, Maia Brewton, Keith Coogan) – Classic Movie Review 10,410

Elisabeth Shue takes her first steps in Babysitting…

Director Chris Columbus’s popular 1987 American teen comedy Adventures in Babysitting [A Night on the Town] stars an attractive but anonymous-seeming young Elisabeth Shue, giving an engaging performance here as a teenager called Chris who, after being stood up by a date with her boyfriend, accepts a job of babysitting a wealthy couple’s precocious daughter Sara (Maia Brewton) and sexually inquisitive son Brad (Keith Coogan).

It leads to taking her young charges for a ride in her car, ending in a crazy night on the town in Chicago when they are pursued by gangsters.

Adventures in Babysitting is a patchy, sloppily written teenage comedy targeted squarely on the youth market from Chris Columbus, the writer of the 1985 The Goonies (in his director début), who hit the jackpot together with the writer-producer John Hughes with the 1990 Home Alone.

It is in the same vein as, but several notches down from, John Hughes’s best work like the similar Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. However, simple-minded and thin though it is, it still proves a tolerable and amusing enough time-passer. The writer here is David Simkins, whose spec script impressed producers Lynda Obst and Debra Hill. Simkins has a cameo as Frat Boy with Playboy (uncredited). It also has cameos by blues singer-guitarist Albert Collins (as himself, a player in a Chicago Blues club) and singer-songwriter Southside Johnny Lyon (as band leader at frat party).

Also in the cast are Maia Brewton, Keith Coogan, Anthony Rapp, Calvin Levels, Penelope Ann Miller, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lolita Davidovich [Lolita David], Albert Collins, George Newbern, John Ford Noonan, Bradley Whitford, Ron Canada, John Davis Chandler, Dan Ziskie, Allan Aarons, Marcia Bennett.

Adventures in Babysitting [A Night on the Town] is directed by Chris Columbus, runs 99 minutes, is made by Rose Productions, Touchstone and Silver Screen Partners III, is released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, is written by David Simkins, is shot by Ric Waite, is produced by Debra Hill and Lynda Obst, is scored by Michael Kamen, and is designed by Todd Hallowell.

It was planned by Paramount Pictures, who wanted Molly Ringwald to star, before it moved on to Disney. More than 150 actresses auditioned for the star role, including Valerie Bertinelli and Sharon Stone, but Elisabeth Shue was cast.

It earned a strong $34.4 million in the US on a $7,000,000 budget.

It 2015 Disney announced a remake, with Sabrina Carpenter and Sofia Carson starring, which premiered on the Disney Channel in the US and Canada on 24 June 2016.

A soundtrack album was released in 2015 featuring the score by Michael Kamen, including several of the songs heard in the film plus unused music. It features ‘Then He Kissed Me’ by The Crystals, ‘Babysitting Blues’ by Albert Collins, ‘Twenty-Five Miles’ by Edwin Starr, and ‘Just Can’t Stop’ by Percy Sledge.

The UK cinema version (as A Night on the Town) was cut by eight seconds for a PG rating to remove uses of the F-word. The film was released on VHS in the UK in an edited PG certificate but re-released on 21 October 2002 in the UK by Cinema Club with a 15 certificate for strong language and sexual references. It was released on DVD in the UK on 31 May 2004, again uncut, and now reduced to a 12 certificate. On TV, during the subway scene, ‘fuck’ is changed to ‘fool’ and the dialogue in the scene where Brad calls Thor ‘a homo’ is changed to ‘a weirdo’.

It is the film debut of Anthony Rapp (as Daryl), who later went on to appear in the musical Rent, again with director Chris Columbus.

Shue’s brother Andrew Shue has a role as an extra at the frat party.

Filming began on 5 January 1987 in Toronto for six weeks then moved to Chicago, with special effects sequences shot in Los Angeles.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,410

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