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LOS ANGELES, April 9 (UPI) -- Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead was an empowering comic fantasy for kids and teens in the '90s. The remake, in theaters Friday, offers the same pleasures with a few smart updates for 2024. Seventeen-year-old Tanya Crandall (Simone Joy Jones) has to stay home for the summer with her siblings when her mother (Patricia "Ms. Pat" Williams) is sent to a retreat after a nervous breakdown.
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Mom hires a babysitter, Ms. Sturak (June Squibb), because Tanya and her oldest brother, Kenny (Donielle T. Hansley Jr.), have proven too irresponsible to leave in charge of their two younger siblings. But, when Sturak dies, the eldest children have to assume responsibility, anyway.
The remake acknowledges the time that has passed since the 1991 original, so the writers can't use all the same tricks from the first movie. Most notably, it's harder to dispose of Sturak's body, and yet easier for Tanya to fake a resume with LinkedIn and social media.
Tanya drives for Uber, but cannot make enough to pay for four people, which is an astute observation about how app driving doesn't cut it with modern living expenses.
Tanya still gets a job at a fashion company, as executive assistant to Libra Clothing Inc. CEO Rose (Nicole Richie). Caroline (Lantha Richardson) still is the Libra receptionist who resents the new girl moving up so quickly.
Don't Tell Mom is still a universal story. Kids enjoy having no supervision, but soon learn to value the responsibility their parents took on to raise them.
With predominantly Black characters, the remake adds occasional specific jokes about profiling and the prison pipeline.
In 1991, the characters used the company's petty cash fund for living expenses. Now Tanya has access to a corporate expense card.
Other updates include showing Tanya communicating with her love interest, Bryan (Miles Fowler), via text messages. It also makes sense that Kenny makes YouTube videos and is obsessed with his follower count.
Those updates don't characteristically change the story, but do place it firmly in 2024.
Squibb seems to be having fun being as mean as possible while Sturak is alive. This Sturak is racist, in a cluelessly White way.
It's too bad the film, by necessity, doesn't spend much time with Sturak. Squibb may play the dead body a bit longer than the 1991 babysitter, and when she does, the writers really make her look dead with skin turned blue.
The remake retains the most important callbacks to the original without overdoing it. But it leaves enough room for a new generation to claim Don't Tell Mom as their own, while still including fans of the original.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
