Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

After getting stood up for her big date, Chris Parker (Elisabeth Shue) agrees to babysit two kids for the evening instead. Chris is a high school senior. One of the kids she is babysitting is Brad (Keith Coogan), a junior (whatever one of those actually is), who has a crush on Chris - can't blame him really. His younger sister Sarah (Maia Brewton) seems to think she's a Norse god, wearing a helmet and armed with a tin foil hammer to prove it.

All seems to be going to plan until Chris's friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller) gets stranded in the city. Chris bundles Sarah and Brad into the car to go on a quick rescue mission. They also end up with Brad's tagalong friend, Daryl (Anthony Rapp), who looks like a cross between Ron Weasley and Anthony Michael Hall (what happened to him? He was in loads of early 80s films. Where did he go?). Naturally, everything goes wrong.

It begins with a blown tyre, and somehow results in encounters with a truck driver who discovers his wife is having an affair so turns vengeful, a stolen car operation, gang fights on a subway, a spot of singing the blues in a jazz club, a mechanic who looks like Thor, a two-timing boyfriend, a house party, a new boyfriend, and a chase through the city and up and down a skyscraper.

Yep, an awful lot happens in it, but it's great fun. It's a mixture of chaotic comedy and danger, and like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles from the same year, feels a bit like a prototype for Home Alone, unsurprising seeing as John Hughes and Chris Columbus were involved in all three films.

The cast are great. Shue tries to stay the responsible adult while containing her exasperation, and, while the younger kids are annoying and seemingly exist purely to push Chris' buttons, it isn't in an obnoxious way. It might seem like it's a kids film, but it's more mature than that. There's a running joke throughout the film that Chris is a Playboy model, and the original version featured language that has been toned down for the version currently streaming on Disney Plus. It also seems that some other words that might be offensive for modern audiences have also been replaced.

I remember watching this film on TV back in the late 80s/early 90s, when it was called A Night on the Town for whatever reason. I didn't know anything of the film prior to that viewing, and I don't think I've seen it since, but it's always been one that I've remembered with fondness. Sometimes watching films again decades later leads you to question your earlier tastes and standards, but, for me at least, this film has stood the test of time. Good stuff and thoroughly entertaining.