So Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (AKA The Secret to My Success 2: Electric Boogaloo) is one of the most shameless wannabee ripoffs I've seen. You can tell from the image that this movie has on IMDb. The pull quote from the top of the image reads "Its Home Alone Times Five"...Whoever wrote that should be stripped of the right to free speech. It wants you to think that this movie has something to do with a bunch of kids and the fact that they have to deal with being "home alone". But it doesn't. There's 5 kids and the movie only deals with 2 of them. I say that because they're the only ones who have an arc. One of them plays baseball, one of them had a girlfriend at 11 years old but then didn't for reasons we don't know or care, and one of them fell off a roof. Wacky.
So it begins with a quick intro to the two main characters, the oldest sister and brother. The brother is a stoner, and the sister...seems to be just a normal girl with normal problems one would have at her age.
RANT ABOUT THE MOM: just about the worst person in the world. Seriously? You leave your 5 kids alone for 2 months? This is a premise no one can identify with. Because...WTF. She asked the babysitter if she knows there are 5 kids 1 minute before she leaves...
So I'm going to skip over the babysitter part. Because its not important. The movie's title is about her dying, and its not the least bit important. There's no drama from this situation. You figure it can be almost like Weekend At Beernies, where they have to play like she's still alive to people. Like a relative comes by to check on them or whatever and they have to make it seem like she's there. But no, there's two scenes on the phone where the mom's asks where she is and they're just like "uhhhhhhhh shes gone".
OK, so Kelly Bundy needs a job now to pay for food. Which is the only thing the movie shows as a need when the mom is away. Apparently the big house they live in is devoid of food when the mom leaves for 2 months. You figure this could be an amount that a fast food job could handle. But Kelly says F that I'm too good for this ish.
So then she try's to get a high class job at a fashion...place. And she gets one under false pretense. But there's some mean lady trying to bring her down. This is pretty much the stakes of this movie, and why this movie fails. If she gets exposed, there is no bad thing that would happen. She would just lose her job, and her mom would come back a few days later and life would go back to normal. You could say that she was embezzling money and she would have gotten in trouble for that, but it's like 3 grand...maybe probation...not something a movie should be based around.
Blah blah, the other kids make appearances here and there...blah blah, the stoner wonders if this life of "Rock and Roll!!!" is whats best...blah blah wait, is that David Duchovny? What is he doing here? He could have been written out and the movie would have preformed exactly the same.
I guess I should just end this thing now. So Veronica Corningstone is going to save the company with her fashion sense. It has never been established that she has a superior fashion ability. She just grabs some clothes, and off she goes. You could have made this make sense in 30 seconds with a scene earlier in the movie with her displaying some sort of fashion opinion at a high end clothes store or something. Showing she has some sort of untapped potential at this. But nah.
She for some reason decides to hold a fashion show at her house. You can debate that it was to save money which she didn't have, but that party looked like it cost a s-ton. This was a perfect opportunity to give all the kids a quick arc to show that they can do chores now. At the party everything goes fine til the boyfriend shows up. I didn't mention him before because he's not really important (they could have made him important but there is a 30 minute stretch where he's not mentioned or appears). He sees a house with 50 cars parked in front, doesn't recognize the signs that this might not be the best time to confess his love over a loudspeaker, and messes everything up. Doesn't matter because the Mom shows up and everything's exposed. Which results in nothing. Nothing at all...
Listen, the point is that this movie has no purpose. It is two movies rolled into one, resulting in nothing. You can do a movie about a dead babysitter, and the crazy mishaps resulting in that, or you can do a movie about a girl trying to fake her way into high society...which is what they did. The problem is that we don't have any background or connection with this main character and the danger she's taking in lying about this job she's in. She's just doing it to make some food money. And she'll be OK in a couple of days when mommy gets home.
And this is the director's fault. Somewhere he should have put more meaning in the characters. Giving them more of a reason to be better, or establishing that they are crappy to begin with. The older brother was this, but was done with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Its your job to give this movie purpose and drive, and it pretty much lacks it all.
So it begins with a quick intro to the two main characters, the oldest sister and brother. The brother is a stoner, and the sister...seems to be just a normal girl with normal problems one would have at her age.
RANT ABOUT THE MOM: just about the worst person in the world. Seriously? You leave your 5 kids alone for 2 months? This is a premise no one can identify with. Because...WTF. She asked the babysitter if she knows there are 5 kids 1 minute before she leaves...
So I'm going to skip over the babysitter part. Because its not important. The movie's title is about her dying, and its not the least bit important. There's no drama from this situation. You figure it can be almost like Weekend At Beernies, where they have to play like she's still alive to people. Like a relative comes by to check on them or whatever and they have to make it seem like she's there. But no, there's two scenes on the phone where the mom's asks where she is and they're just like "uhhhhhhhh shes gone".
OK, so Kelly Bundy needs a job now to pay for food. Which is the only thing the movie shows as a need when the mom is away. Apparently the big house they live in is devoid of food when the mom leaves for 2 months. You figure this could be an amount that a fast food job could handle. But Kelly says F that I'm too good for this ish.
So then she try's to get a high class job at a fashion...place. And she gets one under false pretense. But there's some mean lady trying to bring her down. This is pretty much the stakes of this movie, and why this movie fails. If she gets exposed, there is no bad thing that would happen. She would just lose her job, and her mom would come back a few days later and life would go back to normal. You could say that she was embezzling money and she would have gotten in trouble for that, but it's like 3 grand...maybe probation...not something a movie should be based around.
Blah blah, the other kids make appearances here and there...blah blah, the stoner wonders if this life of "Rock and Roll!!!" is whats best...blah blah wait, is that David Duchovny? What is he doing here? He could have been written out and the movie would have preformed exactly the same.
I guess I should just end this thing now. So Veronica Corningstone is going to save the company with her fashion sense. It has never been established that she has a superior fashion ability. She just grabs some clothes, and off she goes. You could have made this make sense in 30 seconds with a scene earlier in the movie with her displaying some sort of fashion opinion at a high end clothes store or something. Showing she has some sort of untapped potential at this. But nah.
She for some reason decides to hold a fashion show at her house. You can debate that it was to save money which she didn't have, but that party looked like it cost a s-ton. This was a perfect opportunity to give all the kids a quick arc to show that they can do chores now. At the party everything goes fine til the boyfriend shows up. I didn't mention him before because he's not really important (they could have made him important but there is a 30 minute stretch where he's not mentioned or appears). He sees a house with 50 cars parked in front, doesn't recognize the signs that this might not be the best time to confess his love over a loudspeaker, and messes everything up. Doesn't matter because the Mom shows up and everything's exposed. Which results in nothing. Nothing at all...
Listen, the point is that this movie has no purpose. It is two movies rolled into one, resulting in nothing. You can do a movie about a dead babysitter, and the crazy mishaps resulting in that, or you can do a movie about a girl trying to fake her way into high society...which is what they did. The problem is that we don't have any background or connection with this main character and the danger she's taking in lying about this job she's in. She's just doing it to make some food money. And she'll be OK in a couple of days when mommy gets home.
And this is the director's fault. Somewhere he should have put more meaning in the characters. Giving them more of a reason to be better, or establishing that they are crappy to begin with. The older brother was this, but was done with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Its your job to give this movie purpose and drive, and it pretty much lacks it all.