A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting

Great Fun Family Movie. Tom Felton is superb.

Great Fun Family Movie. Tom Felton is superb.

This movie is defintely targeted at kids. But it was still fun. I enjoyed it - but that could be 'cause I'm just a big kid at heart. After seeing the cast list, I was very surprised that Tom Felton was in this. Overall it's worth a watch.

How I rate:
1-3 ❤ = seriously! don't waste your time
4-6 ❤ = you may or may not enjoy this
7-8 ❤ = I expect you will like this too
9-10 ❤ = movies and TV shows I really love!

Fun movie for all. Tom Felton was excellent. :thumbsup_tone1:

[spoiler] I will rate this movie Bisex/10 [/spoiler]

Nice that Tamara Smart has been in movies since leaving the Worst Witch. While Tom Felton makes a creepy villain.

I didn't recognise Tom Felton at all! I didn't recognise a great move either! Kids might enjoy it, but it was never as fun (or as scary) as it could have been.

I watched this, b/c generally speaking, many family-friendly movies have some value to them making them worth watching. In the case of this film, there really wasn't anything to grasp onto. First off, it seems that the script was designed w/ particularly young children in mind. There was no humor, and the monsters were something you'd see on Fraggle Rock or Sesame Street. The acting was all right, and the lead, Tamara Smart has some chops, but overall, it's really not worth a watch, unless you have children under the age of 10.

Felton is fun. Smart is Fun. Heck, even Ho, the child, manages not to be annoying. But the movie thought it could coast on name recognition that it doesn't have. It doesn't try anything. The nightmares, as an example, don't mean anything. Nothing links Kelly and Jacob in their shared ability to create from their nightmares. Her colleagues call Kelly "Monster girl" for reasons no one would ever buy. From a production standpoint the lair is interesting and visually fun but the party is confusing because these are middle schoolers partying like high schoolers.

**The Fixes**:


1. **Flesh out the nightmares**. Make them mean something. To the child if not the MC at least. At the end of the movie he's facing down nightmares that are functionally… nothing. It's just gas and bones. He is supposed to have conjured these nightmares from his brain. Why aren't they related to things in his brain. A loneliness monsters for when his mom goes away. A fire monsters from when he almost burned himself. Something. Anything. Instead of just formless nothing. I think it would have been interesting if he creates super powerful creatures but the nature of power is that when you create something strong it creates a weakness. You create a creature with unlimited power in the dark, it's got no power in the light. They kind of do this but do it with more monsters in creative ways. Involve the kid (maybe he keeps a diary of his fears) or at least the babysitter in discovering and attacking those powers.
2. **Brush up on the party.** Dancing in the house with drinks and glow sticks isn't middle school. I'm not clutching my pearls at children and red solo cups but it IS weird. Maybe a video game tournament or heck give him a video game mansion with every room a different genre. One wing is hosting sports tournaments, one wing is fighting games, one wing is minecraft/roblox. It makes him an obnoxious rich kid, it makes sense that everyone wants to be at his house for the part. It gives the MC a place to flex a skill in a room that no one would expect her to like the wrestling wing or something. I dunno. Anything! Here's a fun idea you can crib from other movies like Redbelt. Maybe there's a tournament and a bully kid is about to head to the finals but Kelly shows up when he's handing out free Ls and nervously has to sit in the chair and ends up beating the bully kid in non ranked match that isn't even part of the tournament arc and so everyone remember that match more than who wins at the end of the night.
3. **The dialog could have been toned down**. Everyone doesn't have to talk like they're on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer mixed with... i dunno maybe TheOC or Gossip Girl. Especially not the kids movies. Make it a little more earnest and a little less sarcastic more Recess or Codename Kids Next Door. For crying out loud, if you're going to have a child be bullied. Have a reason for it. They call her monster girl for saying she saw a monster in kindergarten. I mean there's no indication she's going on with it and insisting monsters are everywhere. THAT might have been an interesting reason to have kids tease her. Cataloging the monsters she sees everywhere and discovering their weaknesses might even give her an advantage in her monster hunting. Maybe she uses her brain and sees patterns that the others don't notice and her journal combined with the kids might yield insights. Maybe she's lonely too and the loneliness monsters bothers her and the kid and she gets something out of his drawings an insight that she couldn't get on her own.
4. One thing I thought might have been interesting because it's visually hinted at was that **the kids know how to build monster detectors**. Maybe it's an inherent thing for small children, maybe it's a form of child magic and even that would be fun because then that's explains why you have "tech" that looks like child toys. The organization has been collecting detectors from their charges when they age out and spreading them around. I mean technically that might even be considered an homage to TBC and their shared toys bundles they would use to carry to their charges. There's fun scene you could write where the babysitters use gear and their warehouse is upset if they don't get it back to be renewed.

Once you've punched up the movie, you can drop nuggets like the missing brother of one of the sitters, the monster mafia and the rest of the main bad guy's hierarchy. All that delicious sequel bait.

My favorite bit would be to remove some of the bad kids. It's a kids movie but there's no reason we can't have the mean popular girl sort of see her worth and recognize her. What's wrong with reconciliation?

Final note. There's no reason a math teacher can't be impressed by a student getting an answer right. But no one teaches a math class with random numbers for the students to figure out. It's weird to have a middle school math teacher have to grab a calculator to do some basic trig. Not just any trig but trig he WROTE ON THE BOARD FOR A STUDENT TO SOLVE. The whole point is to be able to do it at the chalkboard anyway. Rather than pull out a calculator, have the teacher go to the board and do some motions and realize: "Oh dang she's right it was 12π."

I decided to watch this movie after watching the trailer, not because the movie looked good but because it looked like complete trash and I seem to enjoy torturing myself. I don't know why I continue to do this to myself but I have to admit that this movie actually exceeded my expectations for how garbage it was going to be.

The story-line felt like it was put together by a 5 year old and any embers of character development were stomped out before it could ignite leaving the characters bland. The acting felt incredibly forced and the gaps in reasoning astonished me, if you're satisfied with characters doing or acting in a way "just because" then you might enjoy this or might be more inclined to get the crew from this shit-show to work on your next production, I'm not judging, you do you.

That being said, my god I hope there is a sequel because I want to see if they can top just how spectacularly awful this was.