Film Reviews

The Sitter

• Rating:
• Director: David Gordon Green
• Starring: Jonah Hill
• Details: US/81mins 15A

Giving Jonah Hill ample opportunity to be Jonah Hill, this generally horrific comedy has a couple of moments that made me laugh, but that might've been because the bar was gradually lowered as the film plodded along. It's very hard to believe that this comes from the same director of (the very amusing) Pineapple Express such is its ineptness. Hill has been plenty funny before, but is playing a version of himself we've seen too many times - while the set-up is too ridiculous to register.
Hill is a slacker (shocking, I know) in his mid-20s who still lives at home. Currently in a one-sided "relationship" with Ari Graynor's party girl, he agrees to do a favour for his stressed mother one evening and babysit three troublesome kids. When his "girlfriend" calls looking for him to drop some drugs off at a party -with the promise of actual sex this time - he takes the kids on a magical mystical journey to New York City. Naturally the kids are a rowdy bunch and cause Hill's slacker no end of trouble; with Sam Rockwell's nasty drug dealer even getting involved to add that danger element.
We know Jonah Hill can act. Anyone who sat through last year's excellent baseball flick Moneyball - or the underrated Cyrus - can attest to that; but all too often he falls back on the same type of character that made him a name. Seth Rogen arguably does a similar thing, but for whatever reason he's just more amiable screen presence and can pull it off in the same way that the likes Will Ferrell can.
The little known, somewhat cult 80s flick Adventures in Babysitting was a fairly obvious starting point with the script and the idea seems to be, "what about that movie, but instead of a hot teenager, we'll get Jonah Hill and he can curse at kids and sh*t." That's pretty much what happens, but Gordon Green can't piece things together in a coherent manner, and Hill never once looks bothered that he's possibly going to be beaten/hugged to death by Sam Rockwell's gay drug dealer.
The Sitter is a disjointed, at best, comedy that tries desperately to play to Hill's ostensible strengths but forgets to shape worthwhile characters or plot around him.

Review by Mike Sheridan