Review of The Sitter (2011) by Adam S — 12 May 2012

This is essentially a low brow, lowest common denominator rehash of Adventures in Babysitting, without all the dated charm. Not that that film was a masterpiece or anything, but it's at least likeable and doesn't seem nearly as forced or ridiculous as this dreck.

Jonah Hill breaks no new ground as a 20 something stay at home slacker who still relies on his mom named Noah. He gets roped into babysitting for three troublesome kids, and along the way gets talked into scoring some coke for his "girlfirend" who is only really using him. He sets out, with kids in tow to score the drugs, hoping to finally get some sexual reciprocation from the uncaring whore. Of course, things don't go as planned, and a madcap adventure ensues that sees Noah and the kids bonding and learning life lessons, and all that touchy feely crap.

It's a tired premise, with dull, painful execution. SOme of the sentimental stuff is actually not too bad, but it deserved to be in a much better movie. This film sucks, but it actually does have a few genuinely amusing moments. Unfortunately, there's a lot of jokes that just don't work, situations I don't buy, and some decently talented people wasting their abilities....

..namely Sam Rockwell as the chief antagonist drug dealer. It's such a weird performance. He does the menacing part great, but he's also annoyign at times, and it's a wildly uneven job he's doing. It's kinda like the drug scene from Boogie Nights, only played painfully campy and stupid. It's a dan shame too, because I initially thought that he would be the saving grace of the film, and, while he does help out some, he ultimately fails to make the film work as a whole. Hill is sleepwalking through this, and Max Records, who was great in Where the Wild Things Are, does decently enough, but like Rockwell, doesn't quite rescue the film.

Apparently when David Gordon Green directed Pineapple Express, he did it as a way of changing things up, and doing something different from what he'd been doing previously. That's fine, but it seems that he's decided to just stick with that kinda thing instead of returning to his old stomping grounds. That wouldn't be a problem if his post PE films (so far) have really sucked.

I pray that, no matter what type of film he decides to make that he pick himself up out of this slump of crap and go back to making something worthwhile.