THE SITTER Movie Review
By: RAMA
Would RAMA hire this guy to baby sit his kids? Make sure to follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
THE SITTER is a raunchy comedy that starts out fine but then the humor goes south after 20 minutes into the movie mainly because it has identity crisis, it can’t make up its mind if it wants to remain a comedy or if it wants to also be a psychiatric drama. Jonah Hill suddenly turns from a sitter to a child psychologist or a shrink and the laughs stop…
Noah (Jonah Hill) is a college student who has been suspended and now lives with his mom. After having a heated argument with his mother, he’s lured into taking a babysitting job caring for the kids of Mrs. Pedulla: the stern and studious Slater (Max Records), no-nonsense wild child Blithe (Landry Bender) and Mafia-esque exchange student Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez). Soon Noah is invited to a party to have sex with Stephanie (Dreama Walker). He soon becomes entangled with two psychopathic drug dealers and a wild chase through town. The kids run away and Noah has to save them.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to instill some heart in an R-rated comedy, the first Hangover movie successfully pulled that off with the underlying theme of friendship and solidarity but THE SITTER is bedridden with too many issues, even the ‘heart’ gets confused. All of a sudden it becomes some kind of public service announcement for ‘it’s ok to be you’.
It suffers from the same disease that victimized Your Highness, also directed by David Gordon Green, the script’s got F-bombs to spare for the next century and that’s all that the movie relies on.
The three kids have pretty funny and interesting personalities and habits. So for a short while, Hill’s clashing with those personalities are good enough to get us engaged, but once those personalities run their course, they don’t have much more to offer and so what’s left is a series of predictable situations that are usually started or ended by Hill’s literally hitting the brakes and that happens way too often.
Hill is a funny man and I think he’s proven that with Superbad, Get Him To The Greek, and more. As Noah the sitter, Hill is just a guy who wants to help his mom and impress his supposed girlfriend, the whole deal with the dad who abandoned him showcases Hill’s dramatic side that we saw Moneyball but it goes back to the problem of this comedy not being able to stay comedy. Sam Rockwell as the eccentric psycho drug kingpin is mildly interesting but even if he doesn’t manage to crack me up.
THE SITTER is yet another disappointing work by director David Gordon Green whose 2008′s Pineapple Express is one of the best pothead movies I’ve ever seen.
I’d rather watch Elisabeth Shue’s 1987 film, Adventures In Babysitting a thousand times.
GRADE: 2 out of 5
Please Leave A Comment-
Comments