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Saturday, December 10, 2011

MOVIE REVIEW
The Sitter
Need One?  Well, Do Ya?  Like A Hole In The Head!

Jonah Hill, needed as Noah, aka "The Sitter", in David Gordon Green's comedy.  Fox 
  
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Saturday, December 10, 2011
In need of a babysitter?  Well, you may hire one to watch David Gordon Green's "The Sitter" while you watch over your sweet little loved one, because the film lacks a center, namely a story.  Jonah Hill plays Noah, a college layabout who spends his days as a suspended student on the couch.  Noah is pried off it into babysitting duty, and in "Adventures In Babysitting" fashion goes about trying to keep everything in control as three kids -- Slater (Max Records), Blythe (Landry Bender) and Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez) -- wreak absolute havoc in the Big Apple.

"The Sitter", which opened across North America yesterday, is a series of vignettes that quickly vanish into the ether as unfinished sound bites that trail off.  Characters fly in and out and are largely unheard of again.  There's no purpose or connection of these episodes to each other or to the film itself, which purportedly masquerades as a comedy but is instead a coat rack with disparate hooks that collide in the most unruly ways via sloppy editing. 

The biggest problems with "The Sitter" are threefold: its lack of energy, comic or otherwise, even during the jaunty but forced opening credits featuring a classic hit by rapper Slick Rick; the weak screenplay by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka, and Mr. Hill as the film's lead. 

Noah growls at his charges with venom and menace yet he's more bark than bite.  He is adept at the shorthand used by New York's homeboys and girls, who look at him incredulously yet indulge Noah's self-fulfilling  Slater flat out rejects Noah's warnings with a dispassion that's funnier than humorless mess he's a part of.  Mr. Records is at his scintillating best, a master of understatement, and he outshines all here, including the always reliable Sam Rockwell as an over-caffeinated drug lord who has a stable of buff gay men flexing their oiled muscles in Adonis-like fashion and cocaine up various wazoos.  Mr. Hernandez plays the film's obligatory racial stereotype, as pyromaniac (and knife-wielding?) Mexican adopted child.

As for Mr. Hill, the actor is far better as a supporting player ("Superbad", "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", "Cyrus", "Funny People", "Moneyball") than a lead ("Get Him To The Greek").  He plays the sidekick/wingman type well whether in comedy or drama, adding incidental, flavorful insights.  Talented and better than the material he often gets to execute, Mr. Hill is a smart expert at schlub geekdom, its champion by default.  The actor is at his weakest however, when having to carry the show by himself as he has to here. 

In "The Sitter" Mr. Hill looks lost.  He's intuitively smarter than Noah but doesn't necessarily show us that he's more self-aware than him, which makes the performance less enjoyable and inventive, more of a chore to endure.  Even a scene of Noah performing cunnilingus on his horny girlfriend Marisa (Ari Graynor) isn't entertaining or funny.  On top of that, other raunchy flourishes are passé.  When "The Sitter" grows tires and stale despite its snappy 81-minute running time there's never any daring or intrepidness in its comedy or ambitions.  "Adventures In Babysitting" aside, in some respects "The Sitter" is a strange, if not lukewarm homage to Martin Scorsese's "After Hours", a grittier, weightier, more adult film about the craziest things that happen in New York City to Griffin Dunne on a nocturnal odyssey.

As a director Mr. Green has undergone a rapid transformation, parlaying impressive independent dramatic fare like "George Washington", "All The Real Girls" and "Snow Angels" into the successful Hollywood comedy "Pineapple Express", a funny film and a genre from which he's since never dared leave.  Mr. Green has been offered comedy after comedy to direct (including this year's "Your Highness") -- the eager acceptance of which has led to a stifling of his keen, evocative vision evident in the dramas marking him as a serious, capable auteur.  "The Sitter" represents yet another sad step backwards on Mr. Green's otherwise illustrious resume.
With: J.B. Smoove, Method Man, Kylie Bunbury, Erin Daniels.

 "The Sitter" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, drug material and some violence.  The film's running time is one hour and 21 minutes.
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