THE SITTER DVD (Totally Irresponsible Edition) (2011)




SYNOPSIS: Jonah Hill rides out one outrageously wild night in this hilarious comedy from the director of Pineapple Express. Suburban slacker Noah (Hill) is watching a neighbor's kids when he gets a booty call from his horny girlfriend in the city. To hook up with her, Noah takes to the streets, but his urban adventure spins out of control as he finds himself on the run from a maniacal druglord. Raunchy laughs and insane action - it's all in a night's work for The Sitter.

MOVIE REVIEW:

He has been playing small roles for years before everyone noticed his appearance in a little movie called “Superbad”. Since then, the pudgy young man known as Jonah Hill has made it big. Seriously with an Oscar-nominee performance in “Moneyball” and a box-office hit with “21 Jump Street”, 2012 is a great year for Hill. On the other hand, no one notices he had a dud in the form of “The Sitter” released end of last year and skipped the theatrical release locally.

Directed by David Gordon Green who helmed the successful “Pineapple Express” (which skipped a release here as well) and “Your Highness”, “The Sitter” has Hill playing a student, Noah Griffith who stands-in for his mom’s friend as a babysitter. Tasked and motivated by his supposed girlfriend, Noah must bring along three brats under his charge in a minivan to pick up some coke from a dealer and bring them to her party. What seems like an easy errand turns out to be a disastrous night out for Noah.  

Noah is the kind of laid-back, foul-mouth, stoner characters that Hill has playing for years although Noah doesn’t really touch drugs here with the exception some mouth exercise he likes to give. There’s just mere mention of Noah as a school dropout, getting a DUI and had a rather rich estranged dad unfortunately the script has limited running time for character developments and we are treated to a slim 84 minutes of slapstick violence, silly gags and a pointless subplot involving a maniacal drug dealer, Karl (Sam Rockwell). You see, one of the kids Noah is babysitting has stolen Karl’s drugs (stored in a beautiful dinosaur egg no less) and he wants Noah to bring back his drugs or $10k as compensation.

The biggest problem is setting up the character of Karl. There’s an unnecessary prolonged scene where we see Karl’s drug lair filled with some weird experimental ongoing and near-naked bodybuilders, transsexual and a roller-skating ladyboy roaming around. Is it meant to be a chuckle-inducing gag because sorry to say, I don’t get it. This is no exploitation movie and this scene stands out as a sore oddity. Rockwell plays the madness well but this is not a movie for him I guess.   

The performances of the three young actors are flawless. Max Records (Where The Wild Things Are) is great as a young man, Slater who is struggling with his sexual orientation. Kevin Hernandez (How I Spent My Summer Vacation) is simply creepy as the adopted child of the family who loves making bombs while Landry Bender plays a girl who is obsessed being a celebrity and make-up. There are some life lessons to be learnt in the end but this is hugely shadowed by vulgarities and a truckload of desperate sounding, unfunny drug and poop jokes.  

“The Sitter” probably won’t mark the end of Hill’s career. Of course, it doesn’t. It just marks the end of pudgy Jonah Hill. You can check out his successful weight-loss in “21 Jump Street” and “The Watch”. If you don’t really have the time, you can consider sit out on this one.  

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The only extra feature is you get to choose between the unrated or the theatrical version. It’s only like 5 minutes difference so no harm selecting the former.  

AUDIO/VISUAL:

Not exactly referenced material but “The Sitter” on the whole looks great on DVD. The Dolby Digital 5.1 is surprisingly active and robust when it comes to pumping hip-hop music, explosions and energetic surround mix.

MOVIE RATING:



DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee



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 ABOUT THE MOVIE

Genre: Comedy
Starring: Jonah Hill, Max Records, Ari Graynor, J.B. Smoove, Sam Rockwell, Landry Bender, Kevin Hernandez
Director: David Gordon Green
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes And Coarse Language)
Year Made: 2011

 SPECIAL FEATURES

- Extended Version

 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Languages: English/Spanish/Portuguese
Subtitles: English/Bahasa Indonesia/Bahasa Malaysia/Cantonese/Korean/Chinese/Thai/Portuguese/Spanish/Vietnamese
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Running Time: 1 hr 27 mins
Region Code: