Andrea is employed in a company that promotes sports talents led by Gianni Porini, as skilled in his craft as ruthless towards its employees. When Porini, invited to a gala ceremony with his wife Marta, he finds himself devoid of a babysitter who can take care of her son ten-year-Remo, hires on both Andrea feet, giving him the keys to the house until the next day. The next morning the police call to Porini and informs him that his house was the site of a party and that his son Remo has disappeared, along with the babysitter. The night before it was the birthday of Andrea, and like every year his friends Aldo and Mario had prepared a surprise party and invite her Sonia flame. To recount what happened during that wild night is the video camera with which Mario filmed everything, absolutely everything, what happened.
The babysitter is the literal translation of the French comedy Babysitting, itself an attempt across the Alps to enter the politically incorrect vein of The Hangover. The plot is the same, including the vulgar gags the surra de bunda, even the names of the protagonists differ little from the original ones, and many scenes are modeled on the French model. The Italian version, however, is more successful than the original, thanks mainly to the filing work on the script and the actors’ improvisation, especially Diego Abatantuono in the shoes of Porini and Paolo Ruffini in those of Aldo, clearly debtor of Phil Bradley Cooper at A Hangover but able to give a spin italics to its unpleasant characterization.
The shopping experiment is similar to the one that the same team had set up for Dad Belli: Colorado Film and Medusa production, Abatantuono, Antonio Catania and Francesco Facchinetti as contraltari comedians, three young men at the center of the story (one of which, Andrea Pisani, existing dad Belli), including a good actress (Simona Tabasco, always centered), and some boundary cameo (Luke Peracino and especially Alberto Farina, irresistible in the role of Tonino “er Rubbish”).
But there is one important difference: where Dad was Belli (well) written by James Bognetti but (mis) directed by Guido Chiesa, who just could not to get into the rhythm and the text strings, the babysitter sees Bognetti is all ‘ adaptation that director. So the shape adheres to the content, with a genuine sensitivity matching humorous and narrative time.
What he lacks in Bognetti (and most of the writers of contemporary Italian comedies, even those with less talent, grown in television and web series) is the ability to “let it work” a joke: the comic effect, at least at the movies, it is not given by either the underscore or the scansionatura from youtuber ( “Scene 1”), but from the audience laughter, which comes by itself, when the joke is good.