Review of The Sitter

THE SITTER (2011) ** Jonah Hill, Max Records, Ari Graynor, Landry Bender, Kevin Hernandez, Sam Rockwell, JB Smoove, Jessica Hecht, Bruce Altman, Erin Daniels, DW Moffatt, Reggie Alvin Green. Disappointing high-concept comedy homage to '80s 'babysitting' comedies ala UNCLE BUCK and ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING with slacker Noah Griffith (Hill, who also served as producer) meeting his match in the diminutive forms of his trio of charges and winds up in a memorably hellish evening involving the crazy girl (Graynor, seeming to have a cottage industry and the market covered with ditzy imbibing bimbos) he's 'involved' with and an off-beat drug dealer (Rockwell attempting to channel Joe Pantoliano's 'Guido the Killer Pimp' from RISKY BUSINESS). One-time indie flavor-of-the-month David Gordon Green may have attempted to tap into his inner John Hughes but the shaky screenplay by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka feels at best a first draft that somehow got greenlit. It doesn't help when producer Hill actually thinks the audience will buy another outlandish premise (the hottie – Daniels – falling for the slob) that feels half-baked at best.