The Movie
Since his breakout role in the crass, R-rated Superbad, actor Jonah Hill has lost weight, been cast in better roles and even snagged an Oscar nomination, so how does he follow up? By releasing (and executive-producing) the crass, R-rated The Sitter. Here Hill plays Noah, a crude, "lovable" slacker (how unusual in modern movie comedies!) who steps up to babysit for the first time in his life in order to do his lonely single mom a solid.
Noah is saddled with three kids, each of whom is dealing with his/her own growing pains. The night starts out badly enough, but when his dirtbag girlfriend calls with a request for cocaine and the promise of sex, he loads the brood up and heads out for an extended bout of child endangerment involving guns, bombs, fists and multiple thefts. But along the way, sitter and sittees mature in ways that no one expected.
To be fair, there are quite a few chuckles throughout, most of them owing to the performance of the very talented Jonah Hill. We are of course reminded of 1987's Adventures in Babysitting, and this recent redux has much the same '80s vibe in terms of tone and even the use of music. As has become the norm with such movies, a slightly longer Unrated cut joins the theatrical version on disc.
For more, sit right down and read Karen Dahlstrom's review of The Sitter.
The Picture
While the color palette here is surprisingly lush, the blacks are really flat and mushy, at times distractingly so, and worse than I've seen on a recent theatrical movie in a while. The 1.85:1 image is also tainted by film grain and video noise, as well as a bit of strobing in fast motion. Clarity is respectable however, as when we can tell that the dad pays Noah with a new $50 bill.
The Sound
While the subject matter here does not offer the potential for a monumental DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 experience, there are a few memorable cues: a couple of different-sized explosions and some sharp gunshots. A Bat Mitzvah band nicely fills out the soundstage, and in one scene an alarm rings out behind us. For the most part, the audio here qualifies as "just fine."
The Extras
The ten deleted (and/or alternate, otherwise extended) scenes run 26 minutes total, these in addition to a section entitled "Sits-n-Giggles" (three minutes), comprised of alternative takes and lines of dialogue tried on-set. The two-and-a-half-minute gag reel is for adults only, "The Making of The Sitter" is a fun a 15 minutes, complemented by the tongue-in-cheek ""Jonah the Producer" (five minutes), and the brief "For Your Consideration" needs to be seen to be properly understood. All of these extras are in HD, and the Blu-ray also supports BD-Live.
Disc Two is a DVD-ROM with the movie in standard definition as well as a Digital Copy of the Unrated edition for iTunes, Windows Media or Android.
Final Thoughts
Better than I thought it would be but still packed to the gills with genre clichés, The Sitter on Blu-ray lacks technical luster as well as class (ever heard of "sharting"?) but might just provide an evening's worth of yuks.
Product Details
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