The Sitter

Directed by David Gordon Green. Starring Jonah Hill, Ari Graynor, Sam Rockwell, Max Records, Landry Bender, Kevin Hernandez 15A cert, general release, 81 min

MOVIE WATCHERS were startled when David Gordon Green, once hailed as the next Terence Malick, began directing stoner comedies.

The Sitter,the director's follow-up to Pineapple Expressand Your Highness, leads us even further away from Green's earlier, hipper films ( George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow) and down into valley of boob jokes.

Nobody will mistake this potty- mouthed companion piece to Adventures in Babysittingfor Badlands. Working from an improvised script, Jonah Hill musters plenty of decent chatty humour as a 20-something loser. It's more than enough to make him a suitable drinking companion, though it quickly transpires that "Caw Caw" greetings and competent comeback lines are not enough to carry a movie. Who knew?

Acting on the orders of party girl Ari Graynor (an early contender for 2012’s most needlessly offensive girlfriend cameo), Hill piles his three charges into a car and goes in search of crazed gay coke dealer Sam Rockwell. Slowly but surely Hill bonds with the closeted gay teen Slater (Max Records), adopted pyromaniac Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez) and teeny wannabe celebutante Blithe (Landry Bender). But will the babysitter lose refrigerator privileges when the parents come home to find dents in the car and a drug-dealer on the warpath?

Hill works hard but the skips and jumps in tone are severe. When our hero “outs” young Master Records in a touching John Hughes vignette, no force on earth can persuade us that the scene properly belongs in a film featuring “funny” gay gyms and “funny” African- American gangs. Pity.