So for the second time in a week, there’s a theater film that opens with oral sex. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a great way to open a film, but let me put it this way – Casablanca didn’t begin with Ilsa going down on Rick. KnowhatImsayin?
Adventures in Babysitting just got an upgrade. Or … what do you call it when you reinvent something useful so that it now totally sucks? The Sitter is like taking Adventures and piggy-backing it to the 21st Century … and then somewhere along that journey, the plane gets hijacked and forced to land in a 3rd-world country where it has to eke out a sorry living siphoning petrol by mouth from the rare passing motorist.
Noah (Jonah Hill) is a loser … and a fairly selfish loser at that. No job, no hobbies, police record and pretty much a sponge around the house. Director David Gordon Green tries to fool us by juxtaposing Jonah with an abusive wench (Ari Graynor) in the opening scenes, but it doesn’t take. Is Noah a nice guy? Maybe. Not sure I care with his willingness, nay insistence, that he put himself in front of others. Reluctantly, Noah agrees to babysit three ridiculously dysfunctional children at a friend’s house. Personality-wise, the kids are all uniquely disabled: the eldest, Slater (Max Records), has turned his closeted nature into hypochondria; the youngest, Blithe (Landry Bender) has become unreasonably sexualized for a pre-puberty girl and seeks out attention by behaving, constantly, like Paris Hilton; the middle child, Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez) is a sociopath. And Jonah is going to teach them all how to love. Awwwwww.
Back to Hill. When the abusive girlfriend promises sex during Jonah’s QT with the alternative universe Brady Bunch, Jonah does what people in movies do – he makes a series of incredibly poor decisions. First, he packs the kids into the minivan he’s not allowed to drive to hit the big city he’s not supposed to visit to score from a drug dealer (one of the conditions of sex. Ladies, I must encourage at this moment never to make sex contingent upon your boyfriend buying drugs for your consumption. I know it seems relatively intuitive, but I hate for the message to go unheeded. If you must, please hold out for cash; this level of whoredom isn’t quite as sordid). Strange that the “score from a drug dealer” part isn’t actually on Jonah’s forbidden list. Neither is robbing a jewelry store, grand theft auto, Bat Mitzvah heist or several other bad moves Jonah would make this evening.
The drug dealer is played by Sam Rockwell. Really? What, Christoph Waltz wasn’t available?
At this point, I’m immediately reminded of 30 Minutes or Less – how are you going to work a happy ending in here? A better question is, “why would you want one?” Every bad action Noah takes is “justified” by comparison – the justification for the Bat Mitzvah heist is the girls are jerks. He steals the car because his dad’s a jerk. He takes the minivan because the parents who hired him are jerks. Drug dealer is a jerk; bar people are jerks; the kids are jerks. Relativistic morality does nothing for me. But that’s more-or-less unimportant. The important part is when the police get involved. What circumstances justify kidnapping children? Endangering them? Robbing jewelry stores? Cherry bombing public toilets? Do you really want this guy to win? Wouldn’t any positive resolution to this story seem shallow and phony?
As usual, you know my credo – all is forgivable if it’s funny. The Sitter? Not funny enough.
Rated R, 81 Minutes
D: David Gordon Green
W: Brian Gatewood, Alessandro Tanaka
Genre: Loser surreality
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Conversers of slang
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Parents
