Review: The Sitter

Jonah Hill is a dipshit college dropout (well, he was suspended actually) asked by his incredibly understanding divorcee mother (Jessica Hecht, who is surely way too young to be Hill’s mother) to mind the neighbours’ (Erin Daniels and D.W. Moffett) kids for the evening, after Hecht has already arranged to go out on a double date and the neighbours’ babysitter calls in sick. Meanwhile, Hill’s manipulative girlfriend (Ari Graynor) wants Hill to score her some drugs and deliver them to her at a party. So Hill decides to take the kids with him and get her some drugs in exchange for the sex he’s clearly never going to get from her because she’s obviously using him. Unfortunately, these kids are more than a handful; Max Records plays the over-medicated wimpy kid, Landry Bender is the wannabe Kardashian celebrity who wears a seriously inappropriate amount of makeup, and Kevin Hernandez is an adopted Hispanic kid prone to running off. And taking frequent pit stops that are merely an excuse to let off explosives and steal stuff. Yeah, that last kid’s gonna be a problem (BTW, you can call him Long Duk Dong). Anyway, Hill attempts to score some coke from bizarro drug dealer Karl (Sam Rockwell, imitating Ben Stiller from “Dodgeball”), but ends up pissing the guy off when Hernandez nicks one of his prized egg-shaped artefacts that contains a mountain of coke. How do we know it contains coke? Because Hill accidentally breaks it and immediately realises he’s in deep shit. Kylie Bunbury plays a sweet former college acquaintance Hill bumps into, Nicky Katt plays a corrupt cop, and Bruce Altman is Hill’s rich, douchebag father whose help Hill begrudgingly calls upon.

 

Jonah Hill clearly loves the 80s. Like his buddy Seth Rogen, he also clearly loves weed. So it surprises me that this 2011 babysitting comedy from director David Gordon Green (“Undertow”, “Pineapple Express”) is scripted by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka (writer-producers of a TV show called “Animal Practice”), not Hill himself. I assumed Hill must’ve had a hand in writing this after watching a bunch of 80s comedies (principally “Adventures in Babysitting”, “After Hours”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, and any 80s flick- usually terrible- featuring criminals hiding drugs in priceless artefacts) and smoking a ton of weed. Hill really needs to get off the weed, man, but I guess so do Green, Gatewood, and Tanaka because this is a lame, mostly unfunny rehash of old ideas that in some cases weren’t funny the first time around, let alone now (The whole drugs/artefacts deal is one of the worst plot points you can utilise). The weed must’ve been especially strong because some of it is very poorly written, especially the clunky way the we get to the central conceit.

 

A couple of bits are funny throughout the film, but not gut-bustingly so, and the film is also pretty similar to the more recent “Date Night”, which wasn’t any better than this (Shit, you could even say it has similarities to Green’s uneven “Pineapple Express”).

 

Jonah Hill doesn’t have an especially likeable presence on screen, but he has one or two OK moments, especially a heartfelt chat with young Max Records, even if one wonders if the character really means what he is saying. Records, despite having the strangest name for an actor I’ve heard in a while, is the best of the three kids, with young Landry Bender being especially irritating and unfunny. Sam Rockwell, meanwhile, has been better, and rapper Method Man plays a poor racial stereotype. Or is Method Man himself a poor racial stereotype?

 

Oh, well. At least it’s a lot better than Green’s previous film, the appalling Medieval fantasy spoof turned stoner sex comedy “Your Highness”. A sledgehammer to the head would be more enjoyable than “Your Highness”, however. Kylie Bunbury is underused but is so charismatic and likeable you wish the film was about her. Instead it’s your standard, clichéd ‘Crazy, hellish night’ comedy, stealing bits and pieces from other comedies. This includes two plot points stolen from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. 1) The precious car you know is gonna get wrecked, and 2) The mad dash home before the parents come home and the jig is up.

 

Sorry, but this is lazy filmmaking, and the cocaine subplot is just unnecessary seediness. Just ‘coz you do drugs, Jonah, doesn’t mean you need to make movies all the time with drugs in them. At least this isn’t “Mr. Nanny”, but that isn’t exactly praise.

 

Rating: C