Shock can be funny. John Waters made an entire career out of challenging convention via slick social satire and really bad taste. But there is something unsettling about the gross out gratuity being applied in David Gordon Green's latest career U-turn, The Sitter. Unlike Pineapple Express, or the stoner saga Your Highness, this 'fat' Jonah Hill vehicle seems like nothing but salacious outtakes. With a horrendously (or thankfully, depending on your viewpoint) brief running time and a fair share of sex, drugs, and post-adolescent angst jokes at its disposal, it's all punchlines and no set-ups. Who cares about character and comic circumstances when you've got cunnilingus and cocaine to slap the viewer into laughing, right?
Indeed, the film begins with Hill's Noah Griffin giving gal pal Marisa (Ari Graynor) some sensational oral. She uses him (never returning the favor) and he acquiesces. Suspended from college and living at home with this doting single mom (Jessica Hecht), he's the typical post-millennial slacker - smarter than he appears, but dumb as a doorknob when it comes to basic life decisions. When the lack of a babysitter threatens a long planned blind date, Noah agrees to help his mother out. Soon, he is put in charge of three caricature contrivances posing as children - the uptight and medicated Slater (Max Records), his celeb-utante obsessed little sister Blithe (Landry Bender), and their adopted Salvadoran wannabe gangster 'brother' Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez).
As luck would have it, his aforementioned F-buddy calls, demanding coke and a personal call. Noah, like any spineless milquetoast, agrees. Thus, with kids in tow, we get the mandatory meeting with the eccentric dealer (Sam Rockwell) and his equally odd sidekick (JB Smoove), confrontations in proper society, and a run-in with a group of angry African Americans. Through it all, Green over-amplifies everything, beating us over the head with each attempted irreverence. Sadly, we've seen it all before. Kids cursing like sailors? Check. Wee ones holding their own against combative ex-boyfriends? Got it. Gags involving the toilet, current pop culture trends, and lifestyle choice? Do you even have to ask?
Through it all, Hill responds like an already dead deer in the headlights. He is wide-eyed and weak-willed, a combination that countermands much of Green's forced energies. You can tell that somewhere in the back of their brains, first time feature writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka thought they could channel such all night comedies as After Hours and Adventures in Babysitting without actually having to pay homage. The results, however, routinely remind us of how much better those movies really are. Green may have given up on the small town stories of his George Washington or All the Real Girls, but his directing style remains dialed down. He doesn't have Scorsese's sizzle. Heck, he doesn't even have Chris Columbus' comic timing,
What he does have is a slight, 70-plus minute stumble that continues the debate of aesthetics vs. selling-out. We never really understand why Noah is such a non-entity. He seems bright enough and nice enough, and his mother is supportive to a fault. But in a film like The Sitter, rationalizations don't apply. Instead, we are stuck in a vacuum of over the top trash attempting to be the latest in hip, happening humor. Perhaps Hill understood that this forced phase in his career was over. He has since shed several pounds, physically distancing himself from the whole randy rotund routine. As a souvenir of this time, however, he still has The Sitter. Some may find it shockingly funny. Others will simply see it as sad.
As luck would have it, his aforementioned F-buddy calls, demanding coke and a personal call. Noah, like any spineless milquetoast, agrees. Thus, with kids in tow, we get the mandatory meeting with the eccentric dealer (Sam Rockwell) and his equally odd sidekick (JB Smoove), confrontations in proper society, and a run-in with a group of angry African Americans. Through it all, Green over-amplifies everything, beating us over the head with each attempted irreverence. Sadly, we've seen it all before. Kids cursing like sailors? Check. Wee ones holding their own against combative ex-boyfriends? Got it. Gags involving the toilet, current pop culture trends, and lifestyle choice? Do you even have to ask?
Through it all, Hill responds like an already dead deer in the headlights. He is wide-eyed and weak-willed, a combination that countermands much of Green's forced energies. You can tell that somewhere in the back of their brains, first time feature writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka thought they could channel such all night comedies as After Hours and Adventures in Babysitting without actually having to pay homage. The results, however, routinely remind us of how much better those movies really are. Green may have given up on the small town stories of his George Washington or All the Real Girls, but his directing style remains dialed down. He doesn't have Scorsese's sizzle. Heck, he doesn't even have Chris Columbus' comic timing,
What he does have is a slight, 70-plus minute stumble that continues the debate of aesthetics vs. selling-out. We never really understand why Noah is such a non-entity. He seems bright enough and nice enough, and his mother is supportive to a fault. But in a film like The Sitter, rationalizations don't apply. Instead, we are stuck in a vacuum of over the top trash attempting to be the latest in hip, happening humor. Perhaps Hill understood that this forced phase in his career was over. He has since shed several pounds, physically distancing himself from the whole randy rotund routine. As a souvenir of this time, however, he still has The Sitter. Some may find it shockingly funny. Others will simply see it as sad.
