Daily Archives: August 12, 2012
A BLAST FROM THE PAST … A MOVIE RE-REVIEW
Last week while shopping I discovered the 25th Anniversary Blu-Ray Edition of a movie I had last seen … 25-years ago. And it was on sale at a price that was way less than what I would pay to see a similar movie in a multiplex theater today. Because I was caught up in a wave of nostalgia, I bought the DVD.
And last night I sat down in the living room to see if the movie lived up to the hype of my memories. In case you missed the movie in 1987, it tells the story of a suburban senior high school student who is getting ready for an evening out at a classy restaurant with a “TOO COOL” boyfriend that everyone tries to tell her is really scum sucking jerk. Anyway he stands her up at the last-minute with a story of a raging epidemic in his home. So she ends up agreeing to babysit for a near by family. Elisabeth Shue plays Chris the babysitter, and in retrospect she looks much too old to be a high school senior.
She no sooner takes charge of the kids … Sara and Brad (a high school freshman who has the hots for her) when she gets a phone call from her best friend who has run away from home but only got as far as the bus station in the Chicago Loop before running out of money. And she begs Chris to come and rescue her.
And thus begins the Adventures or Misadventures of Babysitting. The red-head is Daryl, Brad’s best friend who is a horny teen destined to go up being a dirty old man who invites himself along on the trip because he thinks Chris is the latest Playboy centerfold.
If anything can possibly got wrong, it happens in this film. For the most part the film and the plausible impossible situations hold up for plenty of laughs. Though the use of the term homo really dates the film.
Surprisingly, the film has early performances of actors who went on to greater parts.
Daryl …
was played by Anthony Rapp who graduated to serious roles on Broadway and starred in the musical RENT!
Mike the jerk boyfriend …
was smarmly played by Bradley Whitford before he got a job working at the White House in the long running TV series, THE WEST WING.
And Dawson the car repair man who made an elevator decent entrance looking like Thor the comic book character …
was played by Vincent D’Onofrio who would years later become Detective Robert Goren on LAW AND ORDER – CRIMINAL INTENT. 
The only thing I couldn’t figure out was how the front view the Smurfit-Stone/Crain/Vagina Building which faces Lake Michigan was seen from so many different directions on the Chicago skyline … none of which were in Lake Michigan.
A nice movie to revisit … especially at the price I paid for it.
SUMMERS PAST REMEMBERED
This morning, I read a friend’s blog that was about family (aunts, cousins and siblings) gathering for family summer fun on the water. That brought to mind the many summers my family and my mother’s brothers’ and sister’s families had gathered for a summer family get-together. The only photographic evidence I have of these outings is a single photo that was taken at our last get-together in 1955 or 56.
The photo is a picture of my mother and little brother sitting on a rock in the middle of a clear water stream. The stream bed was natural rock so there wasn’t a trace of mud in the water and you clear to the bottom … fishes and all. It was a great day and everyone was having fun. Since I have a tendency to sink in the water, I spent most of the day floating on an inner-tube.
As the day began to wind down, my aunt’s husband decided to teach his kids how to skim stones across the water. Unfortunately, the rest of the cousins were still in the water. Even worse, he wasn’t very good at teaching his kids. All of a sudden, I saw a baseball-sized rock in the air coming straight for me. How do you duck when you’re floating in the water? The rock hit me in the head and the last thing I remember seeing was red as the water covered my face.
Well, that ended the family outing. My father pulled me out of the water and taped the cut together with butterflies cut from duct tape that was in the trunk of the car. Then we began the long ride back to the city.
That was the last time we had a family get-together picnic. It was also the last time I ever got into water outside of the bathtub.
... a somewhat unknown or perhaps imaginary actor, writer, director, producer, photographer, friend, brother, uncle and all round good fellow that you really should get to know because he lives with that most glamorous fourpaw Mademoiselle Renee. (Mlle. Renee for short)
