'Adventures in Babysitting': Ready for the remake?
Jul 13, 2006, 09:09 AM | by Scott Brown
Categories: Film
Elisabeth Shue warned us years ago: ''Don't f--- with the babysitter.'' Disney isn't heeding her admonition. They're remaking Adventures in Babysitting (pictured, right), the apparently beloved comedy-adventure starring Shue as a put-upon high-school senior whose boring night babysitting turns into a Dante-esque odyssey through blighted '80s cityscapes. So who's the new Shue? Raven-Symone (left), of That's So Raven, a show I've never watched but always assumed was about Poe's wacky Goth adolescence. (It's not, apparently.)
This office, it appears, is a stronghold of Babysitting purists who don't want a repeat of Love Don't Cost a Thing, the (admittedly execrable) Nick Cannon remake of Can't Buy Me Love. Types one staffer: ''oh, this is worse than a remake of the Seven Samurai. this is sick.'' Another simply says, ''This must be stopped!''
There are contrarians, of course. ''I love how you're outraged over the disrespect being shown to a movie that was directed by... Chris Columbus. My feeling is that we're really grieving is the faded glory of our shared teenage crush on Elisabeth Shue. That lucky Macchio!'' This respondent continues with an interesting hypothetical that goes to the heart of the ''race-reversed remake'' question: ''If Shue and her charges flee into a black club and she's gotta sing the blues to get out... where will Raven et al find themselves? Honkytonk?'' My vote would be for a Blue Collar Comedy Tour concert. Or a Klan rally. Whatever's funnier.
This Babysitting memory takes the cake, though: ''I saw 'Adventures...' during Free Video Friday Night at the Sloane House International YMCA in Manhattan with members of a Korean street gang who afterward went into the adjoining ballroom where a wedding reception was taking place and shot out the windows with pistols hidden in their socks, then put a bullet in the groom's foot. True story.''
From there, the conversation degenerated into an anti-Giuliani lament about the lack of ''good Korean street gangs.''
Of course, everyone here is certifiable. You seem like sane folk, though. (Comparatively speaking.) Tell me: Is Adventures in Babysitting too sacred to remake?
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