Plot
After her boyfriend, Mike Todwell (Bradley Whitford), cancels their anniversary date, 17-year-old Chris Parker (Elisabeth Shue) volunteers to babysit for the Andersons' children, 15-year-old Brad (Keith Coogan) and 8-year-old Sara (Maia Brewton). However, she gets a frantic phone call from her friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller), who has run away from home, asking her to come pick her up after running out of money from the cab ride to the bus station. She takes Brad, Sara, and Brad's friend Daryl Coopersmith (Anthony Rapp) and sets out, but they get a flat tire, find the spare compartment empty, and become stranded on the expressway.
A friendly tow truck driver, "Handsome" John Pruitt (John Ford Noonan), offers to replace the tire for free. En route to the garage, he gets a call on his CB saying that his wife is cheating on him and he heads home. A brief shootout ensues and during their scramble to get away, the kids unwittingly climb into a Cadillac just as it is being hotwired by a professional car thief, Joe Gipp (Calvin Levels). Gipp promises to help them get on their way home but not before bringing them to a chop shop, where they are briefly detained. Daryl finds a Playboy magazine and steals it before they escape onto the building's roof; however, it contains incriminating notes and the car thieves follow them. They stumble into a Blues club and are forced to sing about their ordeal by Albert Collins, receiving applause from the audience. Billy Branch plays himself as the harmonica player in this scene. After they have left, the car thieves are held up when they are forced to do the same thing.
The car thieves manage to once again catch up to the kids, but the four narrowly escape by stowing away aboard a Chicago 'L' train. Inside the near-empty train, Chris and the children become suddenly caught in the middle of a gang fight in which Brad is injured and taken to the hospital (Mercy Medical Center). They again encounter Pruitt, who is on the run due to his earlier fight. He tells them that his boss Dawson fixed their car, but he will force them to pay $50 for the tire. They then come across a college fraternity party at which Chris meets a new love interest, Dan Lynch (George Newbern), who manages to gather $45 for them. Daryl almost gets into a fight with a jock whose lonely girlfriend attempts to make out with him. Dan then drives them to Dawson's garage.
In the garage, Dawson (Vincent D'Onofrio) appears, and Sara believes he is the superhero Thor. He refuses to release their car due to the $5 shortage, but she pleads with him and gives him her plastic helmet, causing him to change his mind, and he allows them to take the car. On their way through the city, they pass by the restaurant to where Mike was going to bring Chris on their date, and Daryl spots his car parked out front. She goes in to find him flirting with the sleazy Sesame Plexer. Brad and Daryl stand up to him when he insults her. Meanwhile, Sara wanders off and is spotted by Graydon, one of the car thieves. She is chased to the Smurfit-Stone Building where her parents are attending a party. She goes to the renovated top floor and uses a rope to slip out the window. He discovers her and attempts to climb outside with her as she dangles precariously. Chris, Daryl, and Brad go on to the top floor after seeing her out the window and rescue her.
They successfully pick up Brenda and get home, and Chris sends the kids upstairs while she quickly tidies up the mess left earlier in the day. She settles in just as Mr. and Mrs. Anderson walk in through the door. She goes up to say good night to the kids and they all thank each other for the greatest night of their lives. As she leaves, Dan shows up to return Sara's skate which she had accidentally left behind, but notes that wasn't the only reason, and they share a kiss.
A post-credits scene shows Graydon still leaning against the side of the building, desperately waiting for rescue.
Read more about this topic: Adventures In Babysitting
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
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