Babysitting Takes a Wild Ride in 'Sitter'

What started out as an ordinary night quickly became another adventure in babysitting.

I’m almost glad I was never expected to babysit. Kids are more than little handfuls when around their parents, but even greater terrors when grown-ups are nowhere to be seen. Of course, not all kids are like that, but just one little terror is more than enough. In his husky swan song, Jonah Hill deals with not double, but triple the trouble in David Gordon Green’s The Sitter. 

In his typical twenty-something slacker persona, Hill’s character, Noah, is coerced into babysitting his neighbor’s trio of “darling” for what should be a quiet evening. Expectedly, that is not the case when Noah’s girlfriend calls wanting him to pick up some drugs and come to a party and he accepts. With the three kids in tow, what started as a quiet night turns into chaos in New York City.

Director Green definitely hit his peak back in 2008 with stoner comedy, Pineapple Express and since then has dropped immensely in churning out entertaining laughs. Earlier this year, Your Highness severely disappointed and now only seven months later, The Sitter is nothing more than a hearty uptick for Green. Simply formulaic from start to finish, The Sitter is as fresh as rotten apples. From the start, you know exactly where this film is going and expect when to half-heartedly laugh and when to roll your eyes at the over-the-top behavior. When a fast 80 minutes comes to a close, that nagging sense of déjà-vu swaps places with juvenile escapism.

Jonah Hill does what he does best in The Sitter and that’s being a twenty-something slacker. This might as well continue the streak of practically the same character in slightly different movies. Doing this for several years now, Hill’s got it down to a science, but he’s at a point in his career where he’s better than this and prove that he’s just not a one-trick slacking pony. Going from a strong performance in Moneyball a few months ago, back to his comfort zone is a bit discouraging for people for those who want him to succeed, but The Sitter feels like closure on this part of his career. Much of the film weighs on him, particularly working with two inexperienced young actors and one with a just a bit more than the rest. When you have nobody else to play off except for kids, and more specifically young kids for nearly 80 minutes, it’s tough.

The three kids are definitely exaggerated, hopefully exaggerated caricatures of the worst examples of kids to babysit. The one’s a nervous wreck, constantly popping meds from his fanny pack. Then there’s an adopted Hispanic pyromanic who tends to blow up toilets for no apparent reason. And last a celebrity worshipping diva in the making, who thinks life is just one big party and wants to be the center of attention. 

Putting aside realism, the kids are mildly entertaining and despite over-the-top, one-dimensional mannerisms, they’re only extremely messed up to serve the actual plot. Sam Rockwell is also in the mix as an effeminate drug lord who Hill crosses paths with time and time again. Though a fan of Sam Rockwell as an actor, this really isn’t one of his best performances. Like Hill, he needs to stay away from the genre and stay in the realm of drama.

The Sitter is just one big unrealistic sequence after another that fits for a film setting and constrains every encounter to a small world in a big city. Everything fits a bit too perfectly and conveniently to work within the constraints of the film. The first few moments of craziness aren’t toned down and snowball into a wild adventure with many bumps along the way. And sacrificing heart for craziness can only take this movie so far. Green seemed to forget that along the way and leaves audiences with a very generic experience.             

GRADE: C (5/10)
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