User reviews

College dropout Noah (Jonah Hill) is content doing the bare minimum ambling aimlessly through his life with his only point of pride being a "girlfriend" who only keeps him around to eat her out. When Noah's mother enlists his help babysitting for a friend's kids so she can keep her date, Noah reluctantly finds himself caring for a trio of problematic children including anxiety ridden Slater (Max Records), adopted pyromaniac and borderline psychopathic Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), and vain, attention hungry Blithe (Landry Bender) who wishes to be an aspiring club girl. When Noah has a chance to finally have actual sex with his girlfriend he takes the kids with him into the city to score some drugs at her request, but the kids bring all kinds of chaos including spurring the vengeance of insane drug dealer Karl (Sam Rockwell)

Produced in 2011, The Sitter was one of two films by Pineapple Express director David Gordon Green to be released along with Your Highness. The film was a commercial and critical disappointment but its effects on its cast and crew were negligible as Hill also starred in Oscar winning Moneyball and the next year would lead the successful and well regarded 21 Jump Street, and David Gordon Green would return to indie fare before going mainstream resurrecting the Halloween franchise. While it's nice the fallout was minimal, The Sitter is unfortunately a rather by the numbers affair that was standard of films trying to ape the success of the Hangover where crude, gross, and mean is somehow automatically funny.

The movie makes a misguided introduction from the outset establishing Noah as a loser with a sex buddy who doesn't respect him while also making Noah a lazy irresponsible idiot with no aspirations that reach beyond sitting in an armchair in his mother's house. When Noah is saddled with the three kids who are all varying degrees of "quirky" with Max Records' Slater probably being the best performance by default, the movie becomes rather aggravating especially with Blithe's Paris Hilton/Tara Reid persona (I think, it's actually kind of hard to tell what they're going for here) used to rather cringing effect. The movies first half is basically a barrage of scatological, urinary, and gay panic jokes which are set up poorly no sense of comic friction or much in the way of payoff. But then the movie tries to play itself for pathos with its kid characters all having revelations that ring rather hollow especially when it comes to a "coming out" moment that rings rather hollow against the movie's crass humor. The performances are at least decent, with Sam Rockwell clearly having fun playing the unhinged Karl who steals the scene whenever he's on camera.

The Sitter has the same recurring problems of post 2009 comedies in that it goes for shock thinking that will be enough to sustain comic momentum. With unlikable characters and a rather sleazy approach that does a tonal 180 trying to play itself for character growth, The Sitter just doesn't work.

Noah Griffith (Jonah Hill) is a college student on suspension. He is coaxed into babysitting the three kids next door. He is unprepared for the wild night ahead of him. He gets called by his girlfriend Marisa (Ari Graynor) and gets entangled with a crazed drug dealer (Sam Rockwell).

This is sorta like 'Adventures in Babysitting (1987)' except it's more mean-spirited. Sam Rockwell plays a bad guy that's way too silly. Jonah is way too unlikeable. There just isn't any joy in this movie. The jokes doesn't really work either. There is a couple of good scenes but it is too unlikeable.

I literally LOL'd maybe like 3 - 4 times during the movie, as did the rest of the audience. Now I mean these were legitimate funny parts, that I thought were hilarious.

However, even as funny as those bits were, it doesn't cover-up the entirety of the dismalness this movie displays. The acting was so terribad, at parts, I was literally embarrassed watching the movie.

We won't even go into the string cheese plot and "uh-oh slapstick" mishaps that happen throughout the movie, which by the way, most of them completely defy any normal physics-based logic.

If you are a fan of Jonah Hill'esque movies (which I am) then I would lightly recommend "borrowing" this movie from a "friend" or maybe even breakdown and Netflix it. Just know you were warned.

All in all, it's pretty terrible and I felt kinda bored when it was over. IMHO of course.

After having watched this movie, I can't help but ask myself, "Why did I even bother giving it a chance?" The trailers never really grabbed my interest and the countless negative reviews should have been enough to steer me clear, but I maintained faith that Jonah Hill would deliver. I mean, even if the majority of the movie sucked, surely Hill would provide enough laughs to keep me mildly entertained through the measly 81 running time. I was wrong. Very wrong. I don't know who this movie was meant to entertain, but obviously I'm not part of that demographic. I should be fair: THE SITTER wasn't nearly as miserable as TRANFORMERS 2. So, that's a plus. This movie is just lazy. The plot is lazy, the characters are lazy, and it all makes for an incredibly boring movie. The film centers on disgraced college dropout Noah Griffith (Hill) who is coaxed into babysitting for a friend of the family. He's introduced to the three walking nightmares he'll be spending the evening with: anxiety-wracked Slater, celebrity-obsessed Blithe, and pyromaniacal adopted child Rodrigo. As he's settling with for the night, he gets a call from his drug-addicted "girlfriend" promising him sex if he shows up to a party that night with cocaine. So Noah does as any rational person would do and packs the kids into a minivan to find some cocaine for a woman who, after a quick introduction in the opening of the film, everyone knows is only using him.

Every character in this movie is an idiot (with the only exception being Roxanne, played by Kylie Bunbury). Noah's an idiot, the parents are idiots, and the kids are idiots. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but expecting an audience to accept that all of these people make the absolute dumbest choices in this film is just plain wrong. But that's fine. There are idiot characters in movies all the time, and this is a comedy after all. The problem is that this movie isn't funny. The only person in this movie who managed to elicit any sort of chuckle of out me was Sam Rockwell as one of the most bizarre drug dealers I've ever seen in a movie. He's a touchy-feely sort of guy who places massive importance on his friendships, even with Noah (who becomes his eighth best friend in the world after their short initial meeting). Still, you never get on a dealer's bad side and Noah does just that. So the majority of the movie is Noah with the three kids trying to pull together the $10,000 needed to pay him off. It all goes wrong of course, but I didn't care because I was too busy checking my watch to see how much more of this garbage I had to sit through. I'm all cool with a movie using vulgarity to try and boost the impact of its gags (I really enjoyed SUPERBAD), but this movie is just vulgar for the sake of being vulgar. A little girl craps her pants in the confines of a minivan. That's the joke. Get it?

And what's worse is the movie's determination to cram in "meaningful moments". Everyone in the movie has issues. Noah refuses to accept that his girlfriend Marisa (Ari Graynor, who becomes nerve-grating within minutes…seriously, I was hoping her role in the movie would end with her getting hit by a car while screeching in the middle of the road how she hates kids) is a user with no real interest in him. Each of the kids has an issue that the movie feels the need to address with a tender moment. Seriously, just stop forcing it. None of the scenes felt natural in the movie and I was just wishing they'd move on. All it did was slow down a movie that was already suffering from severe pacing problems. The cast of this film must've known this movie was doomed because no one really tries. Even Hill, who I usually enjoy, was just phoning it in. I guess he must've owed someone a favor and he knew this movie would eventually just be swept under the carpet when MONEYBALL was released. Sam Rockwell is really the only redeeming quality in the movie because he's the only character that elicits any laughs. He's the saving grace that prevented me from giving this a rating any lower. I can't really recommend this movie to anyone because I have a hard time believing anyone would find it worthwhile.

I'm not going to say this was a terrible movie, because it wasn't. I really wanted to like it, especially when I heard this had the same director as Pineapple Express, I thought it would be just as hilarious.

But to be honest, I didn't really laugh once. I chuckled when the woman said "B'yotch", but other than that, it just didn't make me laugh. When I watch a comedy, I don't always look for a compelling storyline with deep characters, I'm looking for something to laugh about and reminisce about with my friends. It had a very generic idea, which has pretty much been reused, person has to babysit crazy kids, things go awry. Of course, this one includes drugs and violence, but even still, the whole thing was poorly executed. Characters seemed forced, and the main character is said to be some sort of slacker/loser but somehow can figure everyone out.

I just think the movie had potential to be as hilarious as the trailers made it out to be. I would skip this if I were you, there honestly is nothing worth laughing at in this, rent Superbad instead.

Noah Griffith (Jonah Hill) is a college dropout, who doesn't do sh*t and lives with his mother. She wants to go on a date, but a problem occurs; her double date partners don't have a baby sitter. A problem that can be solved with the reluctant Noah. Arriving at the scene, he's confronted with the timid, but handsome Slater (Max Records), the wannabe it-girl Blithe (Landry Bender) and Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), an adoptee with a fell streak. The kids haven't even started to ruin Noah's evening, when he gets a call from his "girlfriend", who's at a party and needs some coke. Baited with the chance for intercourse, he loads the kids into the family minivan to meet up with Karl (Sam Rockwell), an artistic individual in the narcotics industry.

Mediocre at best. Not a complete waste of time, but still hardly worth it. Let's have a look at some details, though. My first thought of the movie was: Jonah Hill is getting too old for these roles. Not that those deadbeat character comedies rely on credibility or have an age limit, but still, it's getting hard to believe. The kids are okay, well they're kids. And each of them has a small little problem, which gets solved during the course of the movie, to give them reason to be there, aside being part of the main story. But that's it, every time a small conversation and it's over. Most of the characters are semi- entertaining, with Sam Rockwell being the one that sticks out the most, even more than Jonah Hill, which is bad for a leading character. Which brings us to the main question of a comedy review: Is it entertaining? Yes, somewhat. You don't find yourself laughing all the time, but it does mostly have a slightly funny feeling. Then again, it's lacking originality and you might just smirk, because you knew what was coming.