Director Wade Allain-Marcus revisits the classic 1991 film "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead," reimagining it with a focus on a Black family. The story, now centralized on Tanya Crandell (Simone Joy Jones), a seventeen-year-old looking forward to her Spanish summer vacation, unfolds when her mother (Patricia Williams) suffers a breakdown and seizes Tanya's travel budget, leaving her stuck at home.
To bide her absence, Mrs. Crandell appoints an elderly babysitter, Ms. Sturak (June Squibb), to supervise the children. Contrary to her gentle appearances, she displays crass, racial biases, casting a shadow over the kids' lives. An underage party going sour puts an end to this when the conservative babysitter succumbs to cardiac arrest. The children are left with a situation to bury and a summer to survive by themselves.
Aside from burying the babysitter, the burden of survival mainly falls on Tanya, the oldest and most reliable. With some astute online searches and creative digital tool utilization, the siblings forge an older version of Tanya, who lands a job at a fashion company, Libra, run by a powerful personality, Rose (Nicole Richie). Tanya's summer revolves around office politics, mature responsibilities, a budding love interest, all wrapped in comedy.
The script, penned by Chuck Hayward, Neil Landau, and Tara Ison, is filled with humorous punchlines equally distributed amongst the cast. The script offers humor based on the day-to-day vulnerabilities of young Black children in affluent white neighborhoods and Tanya's managing of her 9-to-5 job under a bogus identity.
Delivered jokes faced a few misses due to less than perfect line execution, giving a slight awkward feel to some moments. Regardless, the humor is appreciable throughout due to its consistency. Jones, in her maiden major role, shows considerable versatility in character portrayal, shifting between stoic elder sibling and increasingly confident professional.
Tanya's responsibilities at work and her budding romance with Bryan (Miles Fowler) get more screen time than her interactions with her siblings. This shift in focus projects a heavier emphasis on Tanya than the family at large. Richie's performance as Rose lacks depth, reflecting a vacant presence typical of online-obsessed millennials. The love element between Tanya and Bryan pulsates naturally, showcasing an attraction mingled with shyness and miscommunication.
The rehashed "Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead" offers fun and focalizes on the challenges of early adulthood but frequently falters on the execution of comedy, diminishing its overall impact. Although containing the right components for a couple of laughs and empathy for its characters, the film feels like a jigsaw with loosely-fitted pieces – a fragile take on teen humor and coming-of-age seldom withstanding the test of time.
