"I'm Right on Top of That, Rose!"

"I'm Right on Top of That, Rose!" :

How a Bad Mom's Absence Creates a Better Mom in Her Stead

An alternative POV on 1991's Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.

When the co-titular Mom (Concetta Tomei) leaves her five kids in the care of the co-titular Babysitter (Ida Reiss Merin) while she's in Australia for a summer, events transpire on a spectrum somewhere between "wacky hijinks" and "unbridled chaos". Broken hearts and bones abound, the matriarchal per diem gets given away and the dishes get "done" only in the most gangland sense of the word. And while this is all presented to the audience as being the fault of unruly kids lacking in supervision, I posit here that it's all Mom's fault. Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991) is definitely a Bad Moms Movie.

Thing is, it's presented as a different type of flick altogether: the Kids Minus Guidance Equals Chaos film. While this is a subgenre that has entries from probably all of film history, it really hit its peak in the late 80's early 90's during the rise of Nickelodeon and their "kid power" propaganda. Films like Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Camp Nowhere (1994) and The Goonies (1985) all showcase what happens to a group of kids without "proper supervision" and attempt to cross the aisle between kids and adults by showing all the fun & adventures the kids get into while usually having them get a firm talking-to and maybe a severe grounding in the final reel.

When we're introduced to the kids, they're all inveterate hellraisers. They're products of divorce and they're not taking it particularly well. They're selfish and lazy and sassy as all-get-up. This is not a particularly harmonious household and that's BEFORE Mom leaves for her vacay! I can feel you already preparing to come to Mom's defense. Please, don't. I assure you she doesn't care about anything besides jetting off to the Outback with her boyfriend (who's footing the bill btw). Does Mom care that her oldest, Sue Ellen (Christina Applegate; called "Swell") is directionless after graduating high school? Or for that matter, that she openly smokes cigarettes in front of not only Mom, but her impressionable younger siblings? Mom cares not, and Swell is only seventeen herself. That's illegal!

Does Mom care that slacker Kenny (Keith Coogan) is super-duper, Cheech and/or Chong levels of high all the time? Or that tomboy Melissa (Danielle Harris) needs coaching to be better at little league? Or that Zack (Christopher Pettiet) is so head-over-heels about Cynthia that he's calling her his "moon goddess" and could probably really use some love advice? Or that Walter (Robert Hy Gorman) definitely watches too much TV (a thing we were very worried about in the 90s)? Say it with me now: Mom cares not.

Mom give so little a shit that when Mrs. Sturak shows up, she only gives lipservice to the idea that her brood might just be too much for her to handle, then hops into the airport shuttle and leaves the septuagenarian Babysitter alone with the quintet of hormonal hellions! To be fair again, Mrs. Sturak seems theoretically capable but then she dies (of natural causes!) leaving the kids on their own. That's one thing I can say for the kids: they did not murder that nice old lady.

I'm not saying the kids here are blameless. Once they're left largely to their own devices, they wreck the house and blow through "over $3000" on an enormous TV they don't really need (Walter), and a "Zsa Zsa diamond ring" for their junior high moon goddess (Zack). They let Walter fall off the roof and break his leg (Kenny), destroy the dishes in the most Beavis and Butthead way possible (also Kenny) and leave a nice old lady's corpse in a trunk at the mortuary with a note reading "Nice old lady inside. Died of natural causes.". But gang, that's all just growing pains. When push comes to shove they're all able to work together to pull off a home renovation / dinner party that would make the Queer Eye gang's heads spin. Along the way they also learn a lot about themselves, some even finding some much-needed direction in life. In my view, however, Mom can't take any of the credit for that. But she can shoulder all of the blame.

Mom barely appears in the film, only in the beginning to cursorily give Mrs. Sturak a chance to protest and again at the end to lay the disciplinary smackdown on the kids, but otherwise she's busy galavanting around Down Under with her boytoy, too busy to offer more than a cursory check-in from time to time. She literally calls twice in two months, never demands to speak to Mrs. Sturak and believes the thinnest of lies about her being at "the yarn store" (not Kenny's finest work... or is it?). Of course, she had no idea dear old Mrs. Sturak had gone to her great reward (how could she, the movie's title expressly forbade telling her?) but at no point did she find it odd that she never once actually spoke to the person in charge of her kids' care? So no, Mom can't even remotely take credit for her children's growth. It didn't happen while she was gone, it happened because she was gone.

That's the greatest marker for just how poor of a mother Mom actually is: to compare her to her eldest daughter and de facto summer mother figure to her own siblings, Sue Ellen. Swell gets a pretty great job (after briefly toiling at the Clown Dog fast food hot dog eatery), handles all responsibilities, fends off unwanted advances at work, forms very real relationships with her boss & co-workers, plans & organizes that incredible (and extremely early 90's) dinner party / fashion show and whips her sibs into shape, all while navigating the minefield that is dating in your teens! She's amazing. Everyone in the movie is, to varying degrees at different times, in awe of her. Not only is Mom a Bad Mom, but Swell is a Better Mom. A 17-year old girl with no noted parenting experience of her own at the start of the film has surpassed her own mother and by the film's end even has to tell Mom "We'll talk about it in the morning. Now why don't you go to your room."

This piece was written for Moviejawn, for inclusion in the Fall 2019 issue of the print zine, the theme of which is Bad Moms. I heartily recommend you subscribe!

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Until next time:
Long Live the Movies!