Movie Review: The Sitter (2011)

December 12, 2011 / Leave a Comment

THE SITTER

BY CHRISTOPHER HASKELL
DECEMBER 11, 2011

What should you expect from a film that opens with its lead actor going down on his pseudo-girlfriend (pseudo as in she doesn’t like labels unless she wants something)? The answer is a raunchy ride through a night of debauchery titled “The Sitter.” Noah (Jonah Hill) is a college dropout living with his mother, with nothing better to do than babysitting his mother’s hot friend’s kids. Of course, the kids are a handful, but they’re not the ones causing the problems. Noah has enough personal issues in which to get them involved.

As with any nocturnal romp into the underworlds of a big city, all hell breaks loose. Someone steals a dinosaur egg of cocaine from a local cocaine dealer named Karl (Sam Rockwell). What follows is a comedic adventure reminiscent of films like Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” and the 1997 teen comedy “Trojan War,” complete with car chases, daddy issues, corrupt cops, homosexual middle schoolers, and even a haphazard love story tossed in.

What sets this film apart is the cast and the comedy that ensues because of them. Jonah Hill has found his niche in comedy as the smart-talking ranter. His long, off-the-wall comments to the characters around him make for some hilarious moments. In particular, his conversation with a seedy bar bouncer creates some truly priceless one-liners. I have seen uncut footage of Hill on the sets of his comedic films, and his on-the-fly comedy style is quite impressive.

Sam Rockwell, as always, plays the perfect villain. Here, he reminds me of his performance in “Charlie’s Angels,” as he chases Jonah Hill around New York in search of the money owed to him. The lengths that Noah goes to find Karl’s money is nothing revolutionary, as the writers follow the same logical lines that almost every get-out-of-a-jam film tends to pursue.

The acting from the children is hit-or-miss. The moments that project the most from them are the sincere, one-on-ones that each has with Noah, bringing to light the issues each uniquely faces. Also, the moments where they say something completely unexpected, like young Blithe (Landry Bender) singing lyrics to songs that she should not know the meaning. The pyromaniac Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez) takes the plot as over-the-top as it gets and could have done without it. The rest of the cast is filler, besides an enjoyable cameo by Method Man.

David Gordon Green has taken to these filthy comedic genre films (“Pineapple Express,” “Your Highness”), straying away from the buzzworthy, dramatic pieces that he started his career with (“All The Real Girls”). And though these raunch-fests tend to be borderline ridiculous, occasionally, these films find a way of being just crazy enough to work. Chock-full of cliches and explicit behaviors, with Jonah Hill at the helm, “The Sitter” produces enough laughs to score a win in my book.