An embarrassing vanity project for workaday actor and occasional low-budget producer George E. Carey, this cross-generational romance somehow manages to be lurid and bland at the same time. One of many flicks about middle-aged men exploring counterculture by having sex with hippie chicks, Weekend With the Babysitter stars Carey as Jim Carlton, a businessman whose marriage is a shambles because of his wife’s emotional difficulties. Turns out she’s a heroin addict, a fact that has somehow escaped her husband’s notice. One weekend, Jim’s wife accidentally summons the family’s nubile babysitter, Candy (Susan Romen), to the house even though she’s not needed—Jim’s wife is taking their son out of town for a weekend getaway. Jim offers to drive Candy home, but instead they head out for a groovy evening of dancing and rapping because Jim suddenly decides he needs to understand what the kids are into these days. Before long, Candy ends up in Jim’s bed, and soon the lovers decamp to Jim’s ski-chalet getaway. Meanwhile, Jim’s wife has gotten into a bad scene with her pusher. In the movie’s most extreme moment, director Don Henderson intercuts Jim’s idyllic sexcapade (mounting Candy while bouncy jazz music plays on the soundtrack) with his wife’s gutter-level travails (getting forced into a drugged-out lesbian encounter for her pusher’s amusement). Even given the diminished expectations one brings to a movie titled Weekend with the Babysitter, this one’s a turkey on every level. The acting is as bad as the writing, and though Henderson’s filmmaking is basically competent, his storytelling is so trite that he punctuates the sequence of Jim getting into Candy’s pants for the first time by cutting to a shot of an anchor plunging into the sea. Subtle!
Weekend With the Babysitter: LAME
No comments:
Post a Comment