Film Review: The Sitter

GO-TO chubby comedian, Jonah Hill, stars as aimless college drop-out, Noah, who agrees to take on three unruly kids for the evening

The Sitter

Cert. 15

2/5 stars

GO-TO chubby comedian, Jonah Hill, stars as aimless college drop-out, Noah, who agrees to take on three unruly kids for the evening so that his divorced Mum may go out with friends and finally meet someone.

Cue Carry-On style capers around Los Angeles as Noah packs his charges into the family minivan on a hunt for cocaine to appease his needy, apathetic girlfriend.

First-time screenwriters, Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka have failed to be original in the characters they created for the film’s child stars-a precocious girly girl, introverted bookish older sibling and black-sheep adoptive brother- but the surprising talent of the three young actors spares us some cheesiness at least.

The writing pair also concocts a series of implausible situations, each as unsatisfying as the last, including a bathroom-bombing, a child-endangering car chase and a hollow, predictable epiphany for the hero of piece.

Hill is back in the kind of role that made him famous, and he of course does it well, but it feels a little false, given the knock-out performance we now know he is capable of since seeing him in Moneyball.

A few jaw-dropping one-liners from the child-cast help The Sitter tick along, but they aren’t enough to flesh out the shallow plot.

Still, the trio deserve a shout-out: Max Records plays the ‘introverted bookish one’ and is also the lovely star of Where the Wild Things Are, Landry Bender plays the ‘precocious girly girl’ and is sure to make a career as an irreverent talk-show host, and last but not least, Kevin Hernandez plays the ‘black sheep’ and should most definitely be cast in a Godfather re-make.

AW