The Sitter

David Gordon Green’s run of semi-successful comedies, following Pineapple Express and Your Highness, comes to a palpable end with The Sitter, as the film is, for the most part, a distressingly tedious piece of work that all-too-often substitutes freneticism for laughs and leaves the viewer with little to embrace aside from Jonah Hill’s ingratiating star turn. The movie follows Hill’s Noah Griffith as he reluctantly agrees to babysit a trio of eccentric children (Max Records’ Slater, Landry Bender’s Blithe, and Kevin Hernandez’s Rodrigo), with problems ensuing as Noah brings the kids along on a trip to procure drugs for his less-than-adoring girlfriend (Ari Graynor’s Marisa). It’s clear right from the get-go that The Sitter‘s most potent weapon is Hill, as the actor offers up an irresistible (yet admittedly familiar) riff on his well-established persona that generally proves impossible to resist – with the film subsequently faring especially well during Hill’s comedically-charged interactions and confrontations with the various periphery characters. It’s only as Noah and the kids embark on their perilous quest that the movie begins to wear out its welcome, as Green, working from a script by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka, has suffused the proceedings with one broadly-conceived (yet hopelessly unfunny) set piece after another (eg Noah and his charges crash a fancy party and Rodrigo eventually pees on the floor) – with the increasingly over-the-top atmosphere ensuring that the film runs out of steam long before it hits the one-hour mark. It is, in the end, impossible to label The Sitter as anything more than a lifeless misfire, and one can’t help but hope that Green has finally gotten his head-scratching interest/obsession with silly comedies out of his system.

*1/2 out of ****