Katherine Waterston and John Leguizamo star in "The Babysitters."

By Evan Henerson, Staff Writer

David Ross' "The Babysitters" is an ugly affair masquerading as either a black comedy or, even more cynically, a peek into the misunderstood psyches of teenage girls and the middle-age men who'd love to have sex with them. An unfunny waste of at least a couple of talented actors, the movie - which opened in limited release this weekend - is too safe to be prurient and too leering to be convincing as an after-school special.

For reasons that appear to be purely monetary, a group of high-school girls transform their "baby-sitting" service into a call-girl ring catering to the lustful and disaffected dads of their charges. The 16-year-old Shirley Lyner (played by Katherine Waterston) is the waif-turned-madam whose dalliance with a client's dad (played by John Leguizamo, also the film's producer) earns her a guilt-inspired big tip and sparks an idea.

Justification or character motivation appears to be of little interest to writer/director Ross. The 94-minute film is on a veritable sprint to get Shirley and Michael from first handshake to forbidden kiss to copulation.

The leap from that improper tryst to Shirley enlisting her friends - and Michael lining up his - is equally speedy, with every male character over the age of 18 (including Anthony Comeau, Ethan Phillips and Adam LeFevre) more despicable than the next. The girls, who are either all business or severely damaged, aren't much better.

Shirley, we are to understand, is working through the slings and arrows of her first love while socking away some college money (she writes the word "Trouble" on the bills, bless her moral soul) in the process. Apart from some take-charge bristling when her girls threaten to cut her out, Waterston (the daughter of "Law & Order's" Sam Waterston) is utterly un-credible as a high-school misfit.

An even greater crime is the presence/waste of "Sex and the City's" Cynthia Nixon, who, playing Leguizamo's devoted but unknowing wife, interjects the film's only bit of believability.

"We made a mess," giggles Shirley immediately following her deflowering. Where "The Babysitters" is concerned, truer words were never spoken.

Evan Henerson (818) 713-3651

evan.henerson@dailynews.com