Wade Allain-Marcus has directed the reboot of 1991's "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead." It's unclear why he bothered.
In the update, Tanya (Simone Joy Jones - fresh from "Bel Air," another retread) is seventeen and the oldest of four siblings. After a meltdown at work, their mom is sent to a resort for some mandatory R&R. Sure. Happens all the time. The kids are left in the "care" of an elderly, pistol-wielding maniac who promptly passes away. Right. Rather than bothering their mom, the kids decide to dispose of the body and fend for themselves. Of course they do. With the help of her siblings, Tanya lies about her age, gins up a fake résumé and gets a job at a company specializing in fast fashion. Uh huh. Desultory observations about adulthood, responsibility and getting by financially dribble out after that.
In the original film, the lead role was played by Christina Applegate, an actual teenager, who was in the middle of an eleven-year run on "Married... With Children." Her interactions with Joanna Cassidy, who played the owner of the fashion company, were the most redemptive elements of a film that was panned by the critics. A high-water mark was a critic labelling the film "amusing fluff." (It got a 35 score on Metacritic.) Inexplicably, the reboot hews closely to this marginal original story. The only novel element in any of this is that the family at the center of the story is Black.
The casting here is uneven. Jones, who plays Tanya, is twenty-five years old. She struggles to be convincing as a seventeen-year-old. However, her charm and effervescence give the film what little energy it's able to generate. As the two youngest siblings, Ayaami Sledge and Carter Young are cute, cuddly, chatty and clever. On the other hand, portraying the role of the lead fashionista is Nicole Richie, who has made a career out of being the daughter of singer Lionel Richie and the sidekick of Paris Hilton. With practice, diligence and hard work, her acting could someday rise to abysmal. Today is not that day. She and some of the other cast members say their lines and then pause a beat, apparently hoping for a sitcom laugh track to bail them out. Help does not arrive.
This is a film with limited aspirations that are underachieved.
