Had I known before hand that David Gordon Green, the man behind my least favorite film of 2011, Your Highness was also responsible for The Sitter then I’d have saved myself 81 minutes.
There is very little in this film worth savouring and the highlight for me was hearing Slick Rick’s Children's Story playing over the titles. From there it was all down hill.
The film stars permo-slacker Jonah Hill as Noah, a College dropout who is forced to babysit three caricatures of children so that his long suffering mother can go on a date with a surgeon. It is unfortunate for Hill that the release of this film coincides with his Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Oscars for Moneyball as when we should be reminded of that time a few months ago where we began to believe there was more to him as an actor than wearing baggy T-Shirts while wise-cracking we are presented with him playing a baggy T-Shirt wearing, wise-cracker.
In the opening scene we are meant to feel for Noah as the favour is not returned after he performs a sex act on his girlfriend. I think this scene is also supposed to be funny but its hard to tell. It is difficult to feel sorry for Noah who despite the efforts and encouragement of his mother seems in no mood to do anything about his sad, lonely life.
The three child characters who Noah ends up babysitting are all annoying and ill judged. There is the South American adoptee pyromaniac who is at the heart of most of the ‘capers’ the film lumbers between, a wannabe celebrity daughter and son who seems to be playing Woody Allen in Annie Hall.
If only the film was a fraction as funny or enjoyable as that. I watched the film in a half full cinema with an average age of about 17, the films core audience, and barely noticed a titter. It’s a sad state of affairs that this sort of boring, unimaginative stuff passes for comedy these days.
A couple of years ago the screenplay for The Sitter was on The Black List, an annual poll of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood
4/10
No comments:
Post a Comment