MOVIE REVIEW: The Sitter

Film: The Sitter
Starring: Jonah Hill
Director: David Gordon Green

The babysitting movie has been a staple in cinema since the 1980’s. This particular niche film has produced some very memorable movies worth seeing over the years. From Mr. Mom to Uncle Buck to Adventures In Babysitting, the babysitting movie has given us some solid laughs and entertainment. Sure, most of the time the plot is ridiculous, and yeah, the kids are usually annoying, but its a situation a lot of people can relate to. Whether you’ve babysat as a job or just had to watch your younger siblings from time to time there’s always something in these movies that makes you go “oh man, I remember when _____ did something like that.”. The Sitter didn’t really add anything new to the genre, but it certainly wasn’t the worst of it’s kind either. 

The Sitter stars Jonah Hill as the nice but sarcastic 20 something that doesn’t have a job lead named Noah. He’s roped in to babysitting some kids so that his mother can go out on a date and have a good time with her friends. Shortly after he arrives at the children’s house he gets a call from a girl that has been taking advantage of his niceness and she informs him that she’s at a party and finally is ready to hook up with him. Noah does what any guy would do and takes the kid on a crazy adventure that ends up involving drug dealers, bars, and numerous counts of child endangerment. This is not your average 80’s babysitting movie, this is your parents movie if it took a few years to go do meth.

The movie itself wasn’t that bad. I went in to it expecting to have a new entry for my article How Bad Is It?, but left the theater a lot more satisfied than I thought I would. I think one of the things that redeemed it was Jonah Hill. His portrayal of Noah was spot on. Maybe he didn’t exactly stretch his acting chops, as we’ve seen this character before, but I really related to Noah in a lot of ways. The things that bothered me the most about the movie were forgivable, but not forgettable. There were handheld shots and canted angles randomly throughout the film that really distracted me and took me out of the movie. The only other thing I really didn’t enjoy was the kids. They were gratuitous cliches of the worst kids you could think of. There was a boy who was overly medicated and anxious, a girl that was a “Celebritot”, which is apparently when a little girl thinks she’s a celebrity socialite like Paris Hilton, and an adopted boy from a latino country who acts like a thug and likes to blow things up. The idea of these characters is fine, but they were taken to ridiculous extremes which got old fast. Aside from that The movie was pretty decent and Sam Rockwell as a coke dealer was hilarious but over all if you miss it in theaters you’re not going to regret it. I’d definitely at least rent it when it comes out on blu-ray.

Review written by: Justin Proper

James Shotwell
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3 Responses to “MOVIE REVIEW: The Sitter”

  1. Dane Sager says:

    Sam Rockwell as anything is awesome.

  2. Dane Sager says:

    I read that on Wikipedia.

  3. Dane Sager says:

    That’s how awesome he is.