The Sitter

Starring: Jonah Hill, Max Records, Ari Graynor, J.B. Smoove, Sam Rockwell, Landry Bender, Kevin Hernandez, Erin Daniels, Method Man
Directed by: David Gordon Green
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy
2011

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A college drop-out (Jonah Hill) reluctantly agrees to babysit three kids. As he's completely unprepared for the task, things quickly spiral out of control.

Review:

Tim: I can just see the excited pitch for this movie- "Jonah Hill a foul-mouthed, awful babysitter!" Brilliant idea! It'll haul in millions! Unfortunately, there's a little matter of execution. While The Sitter might benefit from an inspired idea, the movie is far too predictable and as-expected. The execution is where the movie fails. Now, I'm not suggesting that this is an awful movie. However, it certainly doesn't live up to its potential.

Director David Gordon Green is hard to figure out. He delivered in one of my favorite comedies of the last ten years, Pineapple Express. He followed that up with one of the stupidest, most awful movies I've seen in the last ten years, Your Highness. With this movie, he falls somewhere in the middle. The movie is a long, long way from being good, but it does have a few funny moments and is fairly entertaining. I suppose anything is an improvement over his last film.

Jonah Hill is definitely build for these types of roles. He's perfectly cast as a loser kid, struggling to find his place in the world. Inexplicably, he is given the responsibility to look after three young children. That right there is a great premise, and I figured there would be hilarious moments to mine from this. There are some funny scenes, but overall, I felt like a lot of potentially funny situations were left on the table. Still, it's always fun to see Hill in these kinds of films, and I do enjoy seeing an actor working in his wheelhouse.

I felt like the biggest problem with the movie is that the script was a bit of a mess. We have a hilarious premise with Hill and the three kids, but we're also given all these less funny side plots. We have a story about Hill trying to score cocaine for his kind-of girlfriend, which spirals out of control to include car theft, burglary, car chases, etc. It all just seems silly and there's not a lot that makes good sense. I really like movies that start out normal, and then have our protagonists find themselves in increasingly crazy situations. This movie tries to do that, but it just doesn't work. There was too much, and the script doesn't do a good job of pulling it all together in a convincing manner.

The three kids were mostly good. Max Records is really good as Slater. He has a few funny scenes, but really, he serves as the unexpected emotional impact of the film. There's a surprisingly powerful exchange between he and Hill near the end of the movie that might have been my favorite moment. Landry Bender was probably the funniest of the three kids. She has some really great lines and delivered them with excellent comedic timing. She was great. Kevin Hernandez was definitely the weakest of the three. I just didn't care for his character at all. He seemed completely ridiculous. The writing for his character was awful and his performance was lackluster. He really did not impress me at all.

I really like Sam Rockwell, and it was fun to see him playing such a maniacal character. He certainly went into too over-the-top territory, but it's mostly forgiven. The rest of the supporting cast was decent, but no one did anything exceptional.

The Sitter does have some humorous moments, but it certainly should have had many more. This is a film that had a lot of potential, but left an aggravating amount of that potential on the table. It was mildly entertaining and occasionally funny, but mostly, it was disappointing. I know David Gordon Green can do better than this.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Pineapple Express, Superbad