To paraphrase a line from a song by the Gin Blossoms: If you don't expect too much from this movie you might not be let down.

I did like seeing some of my favorite childhood actresses in the film. Hey! It's the girl from Alex Mack! It is the redheaded girl from Alex Mack! It is the girl from She's All That! It is that mean girl from Full House! It's the girl from Snow Day! Speaking of which Schuyler Fisk is great in this movie. I liked Marla Sokoloff as the mean girl who is just mean for no reason. I love Larisa Oleynik.

I did enjoy the story about the girls setting up their own summer camp and all the obstacles they face. It reminded me of another movie that came out the year before: Camp Nowhere. I liked how in the end of the summer after all their work and trouble they barely made any profit and had just enough money for a pizza. I thought that was funny.

The whole plot about the 13 year old girl (Bre Blair) dating the 17 year old boy is completely inappopriate! I can't believe her parents are cool with it. Stacey's Mom seems more upset that Stacey is dodging his phone calls rather than the fact that He tried to take her unchaperoned to a club in New York City. I acknowledge this is a movie about teenage girls meant for teenage girls so I guess there's some element of "teen fantasy" involved.

What was really problematic for me in this movie though was the whole story of Kristy's Dad. Her biological father just waltzes into town, meets up with her, and tells her not to tell her family (i.e. Her mom and stepfather) or her friends that He's there. Uh, say what? An adult is asking his teenage girl to lie by omission? Why? Does the guy have a restraining order filed against him? Does He owe her Mom child support? Yeah, not cool. At the end of the movie the deadbeat stands Kristy up at an amusement park on her birthday in the pouring rain. Kristy's Mom is then all reassuring and saying "Well, you can't be that mad at your Dad. He's a dreamer and He just chases dreams. He loves you but He can't be tied down and you just have to love him despite that." WHAT?! What kind of malarkey is that? Why is She so calm? She should be as mad as hornets and calling the cops on him!

If they had just eliminated the whole deadbeat dad plot and the completely inappropriate relationship plot and just focused on the girls trying to run the summer camp by themselves plot I would have liked the movie more than I did.

I liked the scene between Mrs. Haberman (Ellen Burstyn) and Dawn (Larisa Oleynik). Mrs. Haberman plays Dawn's neighbor who's annoyed by the summer camp going on next door. Dawn visits to try to make peace with her. I like how they bond. As corny and trite as some of Dawn's lines are ("I think hummingbirds are magical") Larisa just sells it. She is just sweet and sincere enough to make it work. The ending where the girls decide to give her the greenhouse was really nice.

I never read the books so I don't know and frankly I don't care how it stacks up as an adaptation.

To repeat: To paraphrase a line from a song by the Gin Blossoms: If you don't expect too much from this movie you might not be let down.

BTW Dreams by the Cranberries and Good by Better Than Ezra did not appear in this movie at all which is weird since I remember both songs prominantly featured in the trailer.

For a movie close to home and with girls near my age group I expected there to be characters I could relate too and characters I can practically replace the names of the people with people I knew. That wasn't the case. These girls are probably the most stereotypical stock teenagers I've seen in any movie. All of which have some sort of quality making them blend in, none standing out. Thats not a horrible thing, but the only girl I found I was making connection to was Mary Ann Spier (Rachel Leigh Cook). She was a shy, good listening, and sensitive girl. One I could really see myself relating and hanging out with. Pretty much the good girl, stays out of trouble and popularity, is herself and nothing more. I look for that.

With The Babysitters Club though, its exactly what you expect. About twenty minutes in this movie, I took out a voice recorder (compliments to the Motorola Droid) and recording my audio saying what I believed will happen event to event. I was right. Pretty much down to the sentence accurate with the movie. Its cliché beyond belief. Nothing unique, nothing is colored outside of the lines. "The story you expect from a group of adolescent girls" should be the title.

The plot is about a girl named Kristie a thirteen year old tomboyish girl who is the founding member of "The Babysitters Club" a club where girls...babysit. The Babysitters Club consists of Her, Mary Anne Spier, Dawn Schafer, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill, Mallory Pike, and Jessica Ramsey. Some girls don't get more than ten lines in the film (Mallory and Jessica mainly). The girls open a day-care in Kristie's backyard where they handle dozens of kids and try to keep them in control. They face numerous problems like the kids being a hazard to the neighbor ladies garden, them attracting a group of girls who are out to destroy the club, and Kristie facing troubles when her biological father returns to her side making her keep the secret he's back from her friends and her mother, causing Kristie more stress that is showing on the club and her life all around.

The movie is cliché, beyond cliché, non-realistic. Its a movie where everything is resolved the easy way out. If my folks were divorced and my dad told me not to tell my mom he's back you damn well better not trust me. Then the mom doesn't seem mad or concerned when her child is acting as strangely as possible. If my mom saw me behaving like that, she'd lock me in her room and make me fess up. Realistic situations, handled unrealistically.

I also would like to say for a movie to be called The Babysitters Club. There's more day-care action then babysitting which is bizarre. Its a coming of age film that is clearly just riding off the book series' popularity by using the title and characters. There are no scenes of babysitting at all, just some day-care shots then the rest of the points are dedicated to Kristie's personal life and other issues involving the character's life.

So much could have been done with this. It could have been extended with some babysitting scenes gone wrong. Get more into the characters, from what I hear they were extremely built on character development. So one 94 minute movie based on various books doesn't cut it. Especially when the main point, BABYSITTING, is completely abandoned. Still a fair kids movie, but not much of a movie itself. The Babysitters Club will amuse kids from age eight to twelve, but most likely bore kids older. But if you understand the difficult times when adolescents are put under pressure, this will show it in good context.

Starring: Schuyler Fisk, Bre Blair, Rachael Leigh Cook, Larisa Oleynik, Stacy Linn Ramsower, and Zelda Harris. Directed by: Melanie Mayron.

My only knowledge of "The Baby-Sitters Club" book series was that I used to see it in the Scholastic ads when I was a kid. I have no idea how faithful this movie is to the books. I gotta admit I found myself mocking a lot of this movie, as it is definitely made from corn. But I remind myself that I am not part of the demographic this was made for and try to be fair. If you can suppress your grown-up cynicism for awhile, it's actually pretty cute. The girls are all fun to watch and seem to enjoy being in the movie. Marla Sokoloff is a great little villainess. Rachel Leigh Cook would go on to be the most famous of any of the Club girls. She's "all that" here, too.

Some of the girls have little subplots. One girl has boy problems with the kid from Last Action Hero. The lead girl has daddy issues due to her absentee father showing back up. Another girl has diabetes and talks about it like it's leprosy and she's deathly afraid of telling her new Swiss boyfriend about it. He's a dork, by the way. But my favorite is the girl who is worried about flunking summer school and whines about it every chance she gets. Her friends reassure her that they will help her study and everything will be fine. This leads to the movie's highlight, a hilarious scene where the girls perform the most epic rap song ever to help her. It has to be seen to be believed.

I found myself liking this movie more as it went on. It's easy to dismiss it as fluff, and I guess it is, but it's enjoyable fluff. The actors, young and old, are decent. The direction is a little flat and the whole thing kind of looks like a made-for-TV movie but I liked it anyway. I think little kids might like it most or perhaps people who grew up in the '90s and are nostalgic about it.