The Baby-Sitters Club

A colorful, buoyant, loving tribute to the notion of girlfriends forever. Read full review

To be sure, there's plenty of humor to offset serious matters, and Mayron reveals both terrific rapport with youngsters and ability in maintaining a gentle flow to material that is inherently episodic when there are so many characters' stories to tell. [18 Aug 1995, p.F8]

Bright and cluttered and engaging, The Baby-Sitters Club has a youthful buoyancy and whimsical rhythm that catches even the most jaundiced (i.e., 16-year-old) viewers up in its play of light and energy. Read full review

Though the script is predictable, it's not too clumsy. Read full review

The Baby-Sitters Club is far from an unalloyed success, but it offers more pluses than minuses and is both gentle and instructive. [18 Aug 1995, p.50]

The movie is fresh and friendly, but it doesn't have many surprises and the story sags at times. [25 Aug 1995, p.13]

Surprisingly, it's not bad on the whole (in an Afterschool Special kind of way), and the young stars are uniformly appealing, especially Schuyler Fisk (Sissy Spacek's daughter) and CROOKLYN's Zelda Harris. Read full review

Mayron, who directed a remake of the Disney comedy Freaky Friday for TV, took on a lot with The Baby-Sitters Club, and the strain shows. She's got too many characters to establish -- several adults besides the girls -- and her movie feels under-rehearsed, as if she hadn't been given the benefit of preparation and wasn't allowed to get as many takes as she needed of most scenes. Read full review

The movie The Baby-Sitters Club offers the same comfort factor as the books, but suffers from a definite lack of excitement. Read full review

The picture’s problem is that it is small in every way. It’s modestly budgeted, and boasts a simple, unflamboyant story. Its score is bland and nondescript, the performers are scrubbed, and everything is tied up in a neat, white bow. Read full review

The Baby-sitters Club movie, written by Dalene Young and directed by Melanie Mayron, winds up seeming just as packaged and programmed as many of its summer competitors. The books, however obvious, don't talk down to their youthful readers. But the movie does. [18 Aug 1995, p.F]

You don't have to be a baby sitter to like The Baby-sitters Club, but it would help. It also would help if you're in early adolescence. [18 Aug 1995, p.20]

There's no rhythm or rhyme to it. The subplots don't organically connect to the main narrative. It's a series of brightly lit tableaux in which we see the end result of an action but never the action itself. [18 Aug 1995, p.03]

Director Melanie Mayron (Melissa of thirtysomething) has created a relatively winsome movie specifically targeted to a long-neglected group of youngsters. That said, Baby-sitters isn't great stuff, and adults might find themselves annoyed at the obvious plot holes and questions. [18 Aug 1995, p.3E]

There are seven 13-year-old sitters in all, and Melanie Mayron (directing her first theatrical feature) doesn't always flub it when any two interact. But the film's nature and even its title peg it as an ensemble work, and Mayron's group footage looks like crude camcording of a ninth-grade picnic. [18 Aug 1995, p.11D]

The movie, touted as a modern Little Women, shows none of the feminist spirit or evergreen qualities of that film. Even in those cumbersome bonnets, the March clan seemed much more hip and self-assured. In comparison, The Baby-sitters Club feels like fodder for a new generation of Stepford wives. [18 Aug 1995, p.7G]

Moviegoers know exactly how these children feel awaiting the conclusion of The Baby Sitters Club, a dull, superficial adaptation of Ann Martin's popular book series that gives new meaning to the term "growing pains." [18 Aug 1995, p.8]

This film is uplifting, well-meant, and morally impeccable, but it has the incoherent storytelling, abysmal production values and absolute contempt for its audience one ordinarily finds only in hard-core pornography. [18 Aug 1995, p.25]