Customer Reviews

The Sitter (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This movie was about what I was expecting, and it was good. It had some very funny moments, and my style of comedy. Jonah Hill stars as a slacker named Noah Griffith who is forced to babysit Slater, a sexually confused teenager. Blithe, the sassy little girl that wears makeup and wants to party. And finally Rodrigo, an adopted rebellious foreign exchange student. When his girlfriend offers him sex, he takes the kids out on a wild and crazy night of drug-dealers, crazy car chases, and much more. I would definitely recommend THE SITTER!!!

The movie starts out as a bad sex comedy. Jonah Hill stars as Noah Griffith, a slightly nerdy, obese young adult who peddles a bicycle. In the opening scene he is performing oral services for a pretty blond girl (Ari Graynor) who believes fat guys do it best, however she won't return the favor as she claims she has a touch of food poisoning. She is a coke slut loved by Noah.

Mom (Jessica Hecht) coerces Noah into babysitting for the neighbor (Erin Daniels). The kids are a 13 year old boy with responsibility issues, an eight year old girl going on 16, and an adopted kid from El Salvador who acts like he is part of a cartel. Noah is irresponsible as this turns into an "Adventures in Babysitting" adult comedy as he attempts to score some cocaine for his "girlfriend" who has promised him real sex in return.

As I watched the movie for the first time, I had the feeling I have seen this before. Predictable, trite, and mostly unfunny. A "me-too" comedy. A lower tier rental at best. Go watch Harold and Kumar instead.

F-bomb, sex talk, no nudity

This is a Great Film. Hill stays in his own skin, which may annoy some and please others. The Main point is. This is in my top 5 films of the year.

The Sitter is the worst film of director David Gordon Green's career. In case this doesn't mean much to you, allow me to explain: With a slew of films starting in 2000, Green was on the fast-track to becoming one of America's great directors. In 2008, he branched into the mainstream with the well-received Pineapple Express. Since then, he has delivered two more films, Your Highness and The Sitter; both 2011 releases and both being the worst-reviewed films of his career. Because Your Highness was a passion project for Green and star Danny McBride, I don't fault him for this. The Sitter is just lazy however. Green has not "sold out," having been vocal about wanting to balance his more personal projects with films he enjoyed as a kid. There's nothing wrong with having fun and getting a substantial paycheck that could make it easier for him to make those films he's passionate about. What's wrong is when a director with this much talent attaches his name to a project this mediocre. The Sitter boasts a phenomenal director and a talented star, but is bogged down by lazy, repetitive humor and a lack of coherent writing. It's entertaining if you shut your brain off, but at what cost?

The plot instantly brings to mind the 80s cult classic Adventures in Babysitting, at least, I assume it does considering that was the first film that came to my mind and I haven't seen a frame of it since the late 90s. Jonah Hill, in his final pre-weight loss role, plays Noah Griffith, a college student on suspension roped into babysitting as a favor to his mom. Since this is a comedy, the children must fall into a specific archetype so they can effectively wreak havoc. There is the neurotic, stern Slater (Max Records from Where the Wild Things Are), the makeup obsessed Blithe (Landry Bender), and the adopted, pyromaniac Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez). While the children begin misbehaving and destroying everything in sight, Noah gets a call from his girlfriend Marisa (Ari Graynor) who says she'll finally sleep with him if he acquires cocaine and brings it to her. Noah and the children pile into a minivan and set off into the night where he'll encounter psychotic drug dealers, gangs, and a mounting wave of stress.

The script by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka follows an episodic template with each new situation getting Noah into more trouble. The plot is recycled and follows a predictable formula, but it's the disconnection between everything that presents the biggest problem. This doesn't feel like a tight, cohesive story but a loose collection of scenes thrown together to create a whole. There's little consistency in the way each scene flows into the next and the script could have benefitted from an additional draft. I doubt the writing was a top priority for anyone involved though. As for the jokes, it may be unfair but I assume the best ones were improvised. I will not apologize or excuse myself for laughing when a valet tells Noah that he's lost his car and Noah responds "You didn't lose your Morrissey boxset," nor will I deny that I chuckled maniacally when Noah tells a character he's "as queer as a football bat." The movie has a darker tone than the average mainstream comedy, but seems almost uncomfortable and never really follows through with it. You remember how 80s films of this sort would get pretty dark (Adventures in Babysitting, for example, was pretty dark)? The Sitter seems unwilling to fully make that commitment, probably due to the choppiness of the script.

Without the talent involved, all of whom likely made the film more watchable, this could easily be a direct-to-DVD release and it's a sad day that a film directed by David Gordon Green can be labeled "amateurish." I admit I laughed a few times and was never bored watching it, but there's nothing smart or original about The Sitter. What's worse is that the movie has its share of gross-out, double-digit IQ humor that is both unfunny and completely beneath Green as a director. Hill's mounting frustrations dealing with the over exaggerated, devilish children can only keep a movie up and running for so long. On the positive side, the child actors do a fine job and are actually pretty funny. That's more than I can say for the obnoxious, unfunny children in the Adam Sandler-vehicle Just Go with It from earlier this year.

There's nothing pretentious about The Sitter and I'm sure Green was aware it was his worst film while making it. Everyone involved here simply wanted to have fun, get a paycheck, and go home. No one in the target audience for this will be turned off by what they discover herein. The biggest failure of The Sitter is how disappointing it turned out with the people involved. I know Green still has it in him to make a film that will redeem his recent output but I hope it's sooner rather than later. This film would have been disappointing with Brett Ratner directing it; Green's involvement pours salt in the wound.

So let's get this straight: The Sitter is about to be released featuring the round and portly Jonah Hill we've become familiar with over the years, but he's lost a considerable amount of weight and almost looks like a completely different person these days? That won't be confusing to some people at all. Truth be told, I liked Jonah Hill there for awhile. I laughed really hard at Superbad, Grandma's Boy was a lot better than it first let on, and Get Him to the Greek was pretty solid as well. Not to mention How to Train Your Dragon being spectacular. The problem is outside of films like Moneyball, Hill basically has Vince Vaughn syndrome and plays the exact same character in everything. It could come down to character acting, but it gets to the point where you see somebody do the same shtick a dozen times and you just want to see if they're capable of anything else. Director David Gordon Green is on the same boat. I keep hearing how solid his first directorial efforts are and Pineapple Express is one of the best R-rated comedies in recent years, but everything since has just been so disappointing. The Sitter won't be the film to shatter what you've come to expect from Jonah Hill and David Gordon Green either.

You pretty much already know the basic story of the film: a guy who hates kids has to babysit three of them and everything you could possibly imagine to go wrong does in the worst ways imaginable. Blithe (Landry Bender) is a little girl who's obsessed with becoming a celebrity and just wants to go to clubs, dress up, wear make-up, drink and eat whatever famous people consume, and sing along to songs a girl her age probably shouldn't. Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez) is the adopted kid of the family and likes to destroy things for no reason while having a particular fascination with cherry bombs. Then there's Slater (Max Records) who is convinced he can't function without the medication in his fanny pack since he thinks he's beyond repair.

The Sitter becomes very predictable. The three kids constantly clash with their babysitter throughout the film until they eventually warm up to each other and go from there. Jonah Hill spits out a few semi-entertaining one-liners amongst all the mayhem. There are several weird bonding scenes between the kids and Noah though. Noah has a heart to heart talk with both Blithe and Slater, but Slater is the one to step in and try to set Rodrigo straight. The scenes come off as a little awkward because they feel kind of forced. There's a drug dealer named Karl (Sam Rockwell) chasing them and Noah is trying to get to a party to try and get lucky with his sort-of girlfriend Marisa (Ari Graynor). Would you take a time-out to make a kid feel better if you owed a drug dealer ten grand by midnight with your life on the line?

The entire adventure becomes incredibly cliché and is basically an R-rated version of most of the babysitting movies you've seen previously. Despicable Me, Mr. Nanny, Bebe's Kids, and The Pacifier are probably a few that come to mind. This is another movie whose unrealistic qualities snowballed as it progressed. It continued to get more and more ludicrous as it went on. About halfway into the movie, most of the theater was in hysterics but the entire press row was just not laughing at all. Realizing this made me laugh harder than any material in the movie.

The Sitter is just bad from all angles. It uses a recycled and overused storyline, isn't funny, is unrealistic, and is basically an embarrassment for all of those involved. How in the world did Sam Rockwell become a part of this and what the hell happened to David Gordon Green? The Sitter is the type of movie that lets you know several talented people are involved in the project and yet they still churn out run of the mill garbage to try and make a buck. This is hands down one of the worst movies of the year.