Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Too much of everything

Great Film overall

Blistering performances.

Mrs Crandall goes on an extended holiday to Australia for the summer. Her children are first delighted but then find that Mom has hired the babysitter from hell to stay with them. When the sitter dies from a cardiac arrest, they deposit the body at a mortuary only to discover all their summer expense money was in her purse. The kids must find a way to survive the summer without mom or her money. This means actual work.......What could have been a macabre twist on the teen comedy blow out of the late eighties/early nineties,just reverts back to your atypical, nuts and bolts comedy at the beginning of the second act.From the one sheet to the plot summary, I was expecting a farcical comedy about the youngsters trying to keep the death of their sitter secret, whilst trying to hide the fact from neighbours, friends etc...And while this is true to some extent, the main focus is Applegate lying her way to the top and letting her pseudo career taking over her teen life. A sort of Taking Care Of Business meets Vice Versa type combination.And for that part of the narrative, it works for the majority, but it's just too predictable, too safe, and too cute to live up to its brilliant title.The cast are fine, the family are the same carbon copy family you find in every movie of this type, and features the same 'villains' who are trying to bring the main character down for their benefits you'd again find in this sub-genre.So the film carries a feeling of déjà Vu which is a little disheartening.So all in all, it's just another atypical teen comedy, with a couple of laughs.

today movies are violent more than ever before. they are evil and this is the norm of action flicks of today.Now let me welcome you to a time when movies were entertainment. Don't tell mom the babysitter's dead is absolutely from a better day and a better time of life. It reflects not just what the movie style is but it actually was a sign of the times reflected in the movie. No longer will you find movies like this.if you see this review without seeing the movie then find the movie watch the movie the acting directing scripts are all innocently and well directed making this one of the most delightful movies ever made.comparing it to movies of today this movie gets an easy 10 out of 10 for just pure fun. After watching this movie I swear you will feel good at the end not like movies of today. I guarantee you will be smiling and glad that you watched this movie. So what are you waiting for entertain yourself with some quality from the past

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.

From the being of the movie, I had a hard time of following this movie. But, as the first five minutes went by and we got to the babysitter 's death. Which I thought it was going to be committed by the kids and was thankful that they didn't. I love how shocked the women got freaked out by all the stuff in the house. I love all the typical 90's kid flicks clichés like the tomboy girl refusing to dress more like a girl or the funny little montage. I didn't enjoy the teen-aged brother using drugs and felt the movie should have gotten a PG-13 rating. But,I love how he changed from that to nice,cleaned-up, young man and taking responsibility. Anyways, I thought fashion show was funny for the idea for uniforms even though I can't imagine any school taking them up. But, however, I loved it for how the kids pulled it and grew up. It was nice to see mature teen film that doesn't deal with the search for sex. And the I will leave off on one note about the music, I would have to say the music was decent but, forgettable.