“What you tripping for? We got no supervision for months. We finna live like white kids,” says one of the teens in BET+’s Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
This Tyra Banks–produced remake of the 1991 cult classic of the same name offers a Black cast repositioning of the suburban coming-of-age teenage comedy that has prototypically been the domain of precocious white characters. Though director Wade Allain-Marcus (Grown-ish) dutifully attempts to keep the beats of the original narrative intact, he is also retooling parts of the film through a contemporary racial sociopolitical lens. It’s an admirable attempt not to take the easy route, but the film ultimately needed to be more radically different than its predecessor.
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is the kind of remake that wants to have its cake and eat it too, leaving the viewer terribly malnourished.
What’s Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead about?
Credit: BET+
High-school senior and the oldest of four siblings, Tanya Crandell (Bel-Air‘s Simone Joy Jones) is planning to travel to Valencia, Spain, with her friends for the summer before beginning her fashion education at Howard University. Her dreams are dashed when her burned-out mother (Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams) departs for a mandated yoga retreat in Thailand. The determined Tanya believes she’ll be left to care for her oddball siblings: her eldest, stoner brother, Kenny (Donielle Tremaine Hansley); her nerdy younger brother, Zach (Carter Young); and her goth younger sister, Melissa (Ayaamii Sledge). But much to her dismay, an elderly babysitter — Ms. Shrak (Thelma‘s June Squibb) — is hired.
Squibb is a burst of energy as the racist grandmotherly figure, spouting outlandish quips like “Makeup is for geisha whores,” “Surprises are for kids’ parties and the Japanese,” and “Hip-hop ruined the Blacks.” Squibb is so good in this role, you’re left wishing the film won’t follow the promise of its premise. Unfortunately, it does. The morning after a late-night party thrown by Tanya and Kenny, the kids discover Ms. Shrak’s lifeless body. They dispose of her without much trouble. Their bigger task becomes figuring out how to earn enough money for food. Initially, Tanya takes a rideshare job, leading to a meet-cute with hopeful architecture student Bryan (Bottoms’ Miles Fowler).
Of course, rideshare alone isn’t going to pay the bills (it’s one of the many winking nods the film makes to the ills of the modern economy). Using a résumé ginned up by Melissa, 17-year-old Tanya applies to be a receptionist at Libra — a monochromatic clothing line that values a balance between pretty and practical. Tanya’s exceptional, made-up job history is enough to catch the eye of the company’s executive Rose Lindsey (Nicole Richie). Tanya becomes her assistant, forcing the teen to abruptly navigate the demands of adulthood.
The kids are alright in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
Credit: BET+
Unlike the 1991 version, Allain-Marcus isn’t wholly interested in corporate workplace dynamics. Rose’s boyfriend, Gus (The Blackening‘s Jermaine Fowler), for instance, a lecherous fiend who preyed on Christina Applegate’s underaged character in the previous film, doesn’t have the same carnal desires for Tanya. In this version, he’s merely a hapless philandering dweeb. Caroline (This is Us‘s Iantha Richardson), the office rival to Tanya, isn’t an imposing threat, either.
Screenwriter Chuck Hayward’s script shuns any interest in examining the power imbalance in Gus and Rose’s interracial relationship. Likewise, he ignores the fact that Caroline, a Black woman, is often characterized by Rose as too aggressive. These under-developments are odd swerves for a comedy intent on making joking reference to sweatshops, OnlyFans, and other disparities in the gig economy.
Instead, Allain-Marcus is far more interested in this family’s frigid interpersonal dynamics. Kenny, for instance, isn’t a total stoner, as he was in the original. Before their father died, he was on the lacrosse team. Now, he smokes weed and wears grills. But there is a talented, thoughtful kid there. Falling into the trap of the desire to broadly represent Black Excellence, Allain-Marcus isn’t content to characterize Kenny as a ne’er-do-well. Rather, Kenny’s arc depicts a rebellious kid returning to normalcy and respectability. Through accepting responsibility, he and Tanya grow closer as brother and sister. That angle diverts attention from the film’s many other threads, making them feel thin. And while Jones and Hansley perform admirably — working through an easygoing dynamic that engenders some laughs — Allain-Marcus doesn’t do enough to make them characters in their own right; instead, they’re ciphers standing in for his focus on aspects of style, post-soul cool, and Black excellence.
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead requires supervision.
Credit: BET+
The coming-of-age comedy ends up just so-so, mostly because the narrative beats of the first film are so inherently strong. We want to see Tanya succeeding in her career. We want to see her pull one over on these nefarious adults. We want to see her find love.
This version tries to keep those components while adding new beats, like Tanya learning to be a better sister to her siblings. In trying to balance both aims, the themes are stretched woefully thin. Even the relationship between Bryan and Tanya is underwritten. The economic tension of the earlier film — with Applegate as an executive and an aimless Josh Charles working at the fast food joint Clown Dog — evaporates, as Bryan is now a driven architecture student. The same goes for the strain of Bryan being Caroline’s younger brother, which is rendered lax due to Caroline and Tanya’s now-toothless rivalry.
There is simply a more efficient way to tell this story that already exists, and it was done in 1991. The new version’s added wrinkles do little to bring this cult classic to a younger audience, to the point you wish Allain-Marcus showed even less fidelity to the original and cut the characters he never really intended to use, like Gus and Caroline. Considering how strong Squibb is here, you also wish she stayed around longer so the film could play with the third-rail comedy she was providing.
In the end, this cult comedy remake feels all too safe. From its macabre yet madcap inciting incident to its fashion-show finale, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead feels firmly fitted for nostalgic adults rather than defiant teens.
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead opens in theaters April 12.
