A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting movie review

MOVIE TITLE: A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting

Now playing on Netflix

RATING: PG

LENGTH: 1 hour, 38 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: C

IN A NUTSHELL:

This is a pretty cute, family-friendly movie that addresses every child’s fear of going to bed at night. The movie is directed by Rachel Talalay and written by Joe Ballarini. He adapted the screenplay from his first trilogy of YA novels called A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting 1 (Babysitter’s Guide to Monsters). The CGI and style of the movie reminded me of the Jack Black editions of Goosebumps.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

There are some spooky moments, but the monsters aren’t very scary. They kind of look like that creature in the toe fungus commercials on TV. ha ha
The heroine is great at math and a quick thinker, making her a good role model for your daughters.
Because of the target audience (kids), you can expect burping and farting and ooze.
Kids will be able to relate to the feelings expressed in the movie by the other kids.
The monster hunters value math and science and helping other people.
Kids will love the idea of a secret society.

THEMES:

Nightmares
Courage
Embrace your nerdiness.
Family
When people don’t believe you or take you seriously
Teamwork
Caring for those who need help

THINGS I LIKED:

The two young starlets, Tamara Smart and Oona Laurence are enjoyable and did a good job with their roles.
There is plenty of humor for young kids, although not much for adults.
Fans of Tom Felton of Harry Potter fame will get a kick out of his over-the-top performance and may not even recognize him in this role.
Kids will like the upbeat music.
Some of the CGI is pretty good, but not all of the time.
If you enjoy this, the movie ends perfectly with a set-up for a sequel.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

Some dumb dialogue.
The movie title uses the same font as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, but the two movies are very different.
Lots of scary movie cliches.
There were some bad acting moments, but almost everyone in the cast is young, so they’re just learning their craft.
$15/hour to babysit? Is that the going rate now? That seems high since the minimum wage in my area is $8.75/hour. Parents and teens might get the wrong idea here.
There’s a lot of exposition, but kids will need it to understand the characters’ backstories. That’s often what happens when the author of a book is the one who writes the screenplay.
It started to wear on me and I found myself looking at the clock a few times to see when it was going to end.
For those wanting a one-and-done movie, they’ll be disappointed that the movie doesn’t end with all of the story pieces wrapped up.
We aren’t given much information about the characters but they’re really more cliched tropes than real people. The entire movie feels like it was created from a fill-in-the-blank template for kids movies.
It felt rushed and we’re asked to fall in love with characters we don’t know that much about. If the budget had allowed, it might have been nice to turn it into a short TV series for kids so there would be more time to flesh out the characters and have us care about them.