The Sitter

Like last year’s comedy hit “Bridesmaids,” “The Sitter” begins with the unmistakable sound of a woman having an orgasm; this titillatingly naughty sound gives the immediate impression that the film one has begun watching is going to be vulgar and raunchy – indeed, the film doesn’t disappoint in this area, and is possibly the only area in which the film does not disappoint. What this sound also does, however, is a disservice to the film itself, because it immediately reminds one of the aforementioned “Bridesmaids,” which is a very good film, as opposed to “The Sitter,” which is a very bad film – there’s little worse that a bad comedy can do than remind the viewer of a good comedy that they may realise they could and should be watching instead.

“The Sitter” works – or doesn’t – as a vehicle for Jonah Hill, a talented comedy actor from such films as “Get Him to the Greek,” “Superbad” and “Cyrus.” Hill also recently starred in sports drama “Moneyball,” in which he showed that he is just as talented at drama as he is at comedy, if not more so. But no, “The Sitter” calls for Hill to go back to his increasingly familiar comedy routine, which oddly still works for the most part, but sadly does not come close to being enough to rescue this pile of garbage.

Hill stars as Noah, a suspended college student who, in spite of his biblical name, is not the kind of person you’d let babysit your children – he’s foul-mouthed, irresponsible, reckless and a bit of a drunk. However, in a hilarious turn of events, Noah ends up being – gasp – a babysitter, though thankfully for one night only – it is a night that turns out to be rather eventful, though unfortunately not the slightest bit funny.

Noah has to babysit the three horrible children of his mother’s friend (whom the camera lets us know has very large breasts) when the normal babysitter pulls out. The three children are as follows: Blithe (Landry Bender), an inappropriate celebrity wannabe who smothers herself in make-up; Slater (Max Records, “Where the Wild Things Are”), a glamour model wannabe with “issues;” and Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), an adopted Mexican pyromaniac who enjoys running away from home and blowing up toilets.

As you can imagine, things go a little haywire once mummy and daddy are away, signalling the annoying little rats to play, and play hard they most certainly do. But it’s not until Noah gets an invitation from his slutty girlfriend for sexual intercourse that things really go down the shitter, the film included. What follows is, of course, an increasingly disastrous and deeply unfunny series of comedic events featuring crazy situations and colourful characters, including Sam Rockwell as a rollerblading drug dealer who owns a dinosaur egg.

The film feasts off of this one unexceptional concept (an irresponsible individual placed into a position of high responsibility) and lazily runs with it for almost the whole runtime. There is very little imagination put into the script (written by first-time screenwriters Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka), much of the film’s comedy relying on outrageously tired comedy tropes such as nutty drug dealers, grand theft auto, children swearing, the acquiring of cocaine, and angry, angry black people. The result is this tedious film that doesn’t so much as raise a smile as crush a soul.

My main problem with “The Sitter” is this: anyone with the slightest familiarity with both Jonah Hill and the objectives of babysitters could have very easily written this film, possibly more competently than Gatewood and Tanaka managed to do. All one has to do is copy the formula we’ve seen in previous films such as “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and “Superbad,” apply it to the irresponsible-babysitter plot, throw in some unexpected life lessons, and voila, we have “The Sitter,” the comedy film equivalent of a 13-year-old sniggering at the sound of a woman having an orgasm.

I mentioned life lessons there; yes, it’s true, “The Sitter” actually has the nerve to try and teach its audience life lessons. For example, there’s one about not hiding your true self and accepting who you really are – how enlightening. Now, I obviously can’t speak for the rest of the film’s viewers, but I myself am strongly opposed to having to listen to life lessons from a film that features, among many other things, a small child publically urinating in the middle of a Bar Mitzvah and another loudly shitting herself while seated in a minivan; those are pretty much the comedy highlights of this film.

The only real saving grace of “The Sitter” is its relentlessly frenetic pace, a sure sign of the writers’ short attention span; what the fast pacing means is that the narrative is gotten through very quickly, resulting in the film lasting a merciful length of 77 minutes. Nevertheless, 125 minutes of fellow babysitter comedy “Mrs. Doubtfire” is significantly easier to get through than half an hour of this R-rated rubbish.

3/10