Babysitting (2014)

Franck works as a receptionist at Schaudel Publishing and dreams of getting a comic book published. As he is trying to show his drawings to his CEO, Marc Schaudel, he runs into a little boy in the elevator watching Scream 4. The encounter goes badly: the boy takes him to task and insults him, so Franck reveals the ending of the film, creating tension between them. Franck then shows his drawings to Marc Schaudel, who is only half-interested and prefers to answer phone calls about a traffic accident in the parking lot. Franck, who is supposed to celebrate his ..., goes to the supermarket with his friends Sam and Alex to buy what they need for the party planned for that evening. Sam is a real ladies’ man, while Alex is a reckless driver who causes various accidents—including the one in the parking lot at Marc’s company—and also steals a camera he was supposed to deliver. Franck, who was meant to celebrate his birthday, is forced by his boss to look after the latter’s son until the following evening, even though the arrangement had originally only been for the evening. In return, Marc Schaudel agrees to look over Franck’s pages on Monday at 7 p.m. Marc Schaudel and his wife have to attend an important ceremony, and their babysitter has suddenly cancelled after being assaulted on the subway. It turns out that their son, Rémy, is the boy from the elevator. Marc assures his wife that Franck is a reliable person, even though he barely knows him and has only seen him a few times over the course of their two years working together—he even calls him François. The evening gets off to a bad start between Franck and Rémy. Rémy does whatever he wants and tells his new babysitter not to speak to him for the rest of the evening if he doesn’t want to be accused of molestation. The next day, the parents are woken by a phone call from the police informing them that the boy and the babysitter have disappeared. They rush home and find the house in disarray. The police investigator suggests that it may be a child abduction, or something similarly sinister, which terrifies the Schaudel couple. However, one of the officers finds Alex’s camera at the scene, containing footage filmed since the previous day. The police and the parents watch the videos and gradually piece together what happened that evening. The viewers comment on the footage. The film shows Franck’s two friends, Sam and Alex (who films the whole evening), determined to celebrate his birthday. They have burst into the Schaudels’ house and given Rémy a sleeping pill, although Franck initially didn’t want anyone over for fear things might get out of hand. The guests begin arriving. Among them are Ernest and his cousin, the beautiful Sonia, who once worked briefly at Schaudel Publishing and had a brief relationship with Franck at a leaving party; Franck is still in love with her. Franck is soon completely overwhelmed by events and tries to explain to the guests that this isn’t his house, but Sam passes him off as a joker. Sam and Alex have already accidentally killed the Schaudels’ parrot, compared a photo of Marc to “Gollum” from The Lord of the Rings (a reference Marc doesn’t understand while watching the footage, though it annoys him), and the party continues to spiral out of control. Franck thinks he has been arrested by the police, but in fact two fake officers have handcuffed him to a chair; one of them gradually undresses and smacks him in the face with her buttocks. Franck realizes that Rémy, who has since woken up, is missing. Shortly before disappearing, Rémy had threatened to tell his parents the whole truth unless Franck gave him ..., but in the end he stole Franck’s mobile phone and sent several vulgar, obscene text messages to the female contacts on it. Panicked and furious, Franck searches the house for him, then remembers that the boy wanted to go to the local fairground. Accompanied by Sam, Alex, Sonia, and Ernest, he goes to look for Rémy in the Schaudels’ car, which Alex has taken. Franck asks his friends Paul and Jean to get everyone out and tidy up. On the way, Ernest discovers that his wife has cheated on him with Sam. Enraged, he gets out of the car. Just then, a truck rips off the Range Rover’s rear left door. When the police arrive and ask for the vehicle’s documents—which Alex, the driver, obviously doesn’t have—he decides to speed away. After a chase, the car crashes in the woods of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. After encountering some prostitutes (and the police investigator, who claims during the viewing that he was conducting an “investigation”), the four friends walk through the forest to the fair and find Rémy, who insists that they stay for an hour. They reluctantly agree and end up having a great time, with Sonia growing closer to Franck. They also learn that Rémy’s greatest dream is for his father, who only thinks about himself and pays no attention to his son, to come and watch him play football. On their way back, they find Ernest, completely drunk, after he refused to pay for his meal. When Rémy quickly needs his Ventolin inhaler to get through an asthma attack, the group all head back to the Schaudels’ house in go-karts stolen from the fairground, in a chase worthy of Mario Kart. They first escape the barman’s friends, after Ernest knocked the barman out without paying his bill. On the way, a fixed speed camera catches them. When they arrive, things are worse than ever: the house, garden, and swimming pool are packed because Paul and Jean have made the party ten times bigger instead of cleaning up. A neighbor comes to complain about the noise, and Ernest mocks him for looking “like the guy from the film Up.” Franck, who has been slapped by one of his female contacts after she received the obscene text Rémy sent before leaving for the fairground, is furious and decides to throw everyone out. He says that he doesn’t know most of them, that he hates everyone, and that the Schaudels will cause him all kinds of trouble when they get home. Some of the guests still there are completely drunk and slumped on the sofa, unable to move, dressed in skimpy clothes or plush animal costumes. Sonia snaps them out of it and sends them packing with a spanking. Before Alex’s video ends, Rémy says he has had the best time ever and considers his babysitter a member of his family, even a father. He says Franck turned out to be a much better guy than he expected. Franck tells him to get to sleep as soon as possible so he’ll be ready at dawn for an important event. But Franck’s group is called outside because the last remaining partygoers have tied the neighbor to an armchair with helium balloons attached to it, just like in Up. The film cuts off abruptly, and Schaudel thinks he knows where everyone has gone: to watch Rémy play in his football final. The Schaudels go there too, relieved to know their son is alive and in good hands, but furious at the extent of the damage. In the meantime, Sam has returned to the house to finish cleaning. He is surprised to find the Schaudels back and claims that a group came and trashed the place, then takes it back when he realizes they have watched the footage. As he tries to explain that he did his best to limit the damage, Sam clumsily breaks another valuable object. Marc, furious, punches him “on behalf of Goldbum” (he meant Gollum, having misunderstood the reference earlier), and the police arrest Sam. Franck, Sonia, and Alex are indeed at Rémy’s match. Alex goes to get drinks, and the Schaudels arrive. Marc talks to Franck. He tells him that his wife talked him out of hitting him, then lists the damage, informs him that he is firing him, and says the police are waiting to arrest him. Franck, who, like his friend Sam, initially tried to make it look as though Greenpeace activists had broken in, replies that he and his friends behaved recklessly and that his boss is right to be angry. But he says Rémy had an amazing time with him that evening, and that he looked after him to the very end despite the difficult circumstances—even breaking every rule by returning in a go-kart to get the Ventolin, or stealing the Schaudels’ car to find Rémy as quickly as possible after he went to the fairground and make sure he was safe. Franck says that the way events unfolded led him to come and watch Rémy play in the football final, where Rémy scores a decisive goal—something that would not have happened otherwise, since Marc Schaudel hates football. This somewhat calms his boss. Just as Franck is being taken away with Sam and Alex, who this time hasn’t managed to escape, Sonia kisses him. The film ends with Franck signing copies of his famous comic book, titled ..., which he was able to publish thanks to Mr. Schaudel, who has every reason to want him to succeed if he hopes to be compensated. Rémy, who is with his father, now regards and appreciates his former babysitter and greets him.