Why Everyone Is Suddenly Watching Jonah Hill’s The Sitter on HBO Max

Every few months, streaming digs up a relic and dares us to hit play. This week it is David Gordon Green's 2011 Jonah Hill babysitting comedy The Sitter, which is suddenly charting on HBO Max. Yes, that The Sitter.

The raunch-com wave that got meaner (and louder)

Once upon a time, R-rated comedies were all about goofy, horny set pieces and the male gaze driving the joke machine. Think the 80s playbook: Revenge of the Nerds, Bachelor Party. Not endorsing that vibe, just acknowledging the era. By the 2000s, the baton passed to profanity-forward chaos that often punched down and added drugs and booze to the mix. Pineapple Express. Superbad, with its whole plan to get girls drunk to 'loosen up.' The 2010s opened with more of the same: Hot Tub Time Machine, Get Him to the Greek, A Good Old Fashioned Orgy. Later in the decade, you get fresher voices and more diverse casts, but in 2011 some filmmakers were still trying to squeeze one more hit out of the old formula. Enter: The Sitter.

So what is The Sitter?

Imagine Adventures in Babysitting if it chugged a gallon of energy drinks. Jonah Hill plays Noah Griffith, a directionless college dropout who agrees to babysit a neighbor's three kids: anxiety-riddled Slater (Max Records), status-obsessed Blithe (Landry Bender), and chaos agent Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez). When Noah's self-absorbed not-quite-girlfriend Marisa (Ari Graynor) dangles sex in exchange for a quick drug pickup, he piles the kids into the car and drags them across New York for a night of ill-advised errands. The movie aims for 'edgy': recycled sex gags, shock humor, wall-to-wall swearing. It wants the Pineapple Express crowd, but it feels like it is chasing a high that already wore off.

The timing did not help

This was Green's swing at one last raunchy romp three years after Pineapple Express and just eight months after his stoner fantasy Your Highness face-planted at the box office. The Sitter hit theaters on Dec. 9, 2011, and made $34.9 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. Not a disaster on paper, but compare that to Pineapple Express, which pulled $102 million on basically the same budget. Audiences were moving on, and Green pivoted soon after, detouring into dramas before taking over the recent Halloween trilogy.

Critics were not kind

'The Sitter runs under an hour and a half, but sitting in a dark theater, forced to watch it, you feel that hours of your life are slipping by.'

That line from critic Kelly Jane Torrance pretty much captured the mood. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film sits at 22% with critics and 39% with audiences.

Streaming plot twist: it is a hit on HBO Max (sort of)

Here is the weird part: thanks to a fresh placement on HBO Max, both cuts of The Sitter are suddenly climbing. As of now, the theatrical and the unrated versions are sitting at #5 and #6 on the U.S. Top 10 movies list. People are clearly curious. Do they actually like it? Mixed would be generous. Recent Letterboxd reactions range from 'awful' to 'did not finish,' though yes, it has a few defenders tucked away in the comments.

• Release date: December 9, 2011
• Runtime: 81 minutes
• Rating/genre: R, Comedy
• Director: David Gordon Green
• Writer: Alessandro Tanaka
• Producers: Donald J. Lee Jr., Lisa Muskat, Jonah Hill, Josh Bratman
• Main cast: Jonah Hill (Noah), Ari Graynor (Marisa), Max Records (Slater), Landry Bender (Blithe), Kevin Hernandez (Rodrigo), Sam Rockwell, JB Smoove
• Budget/box office: $25 million budget / $34.9 million worldwide
• Rotten Tomatoes: 22% critics, 39% audience
• Now streaming: HBO Max (theatrical cut and unrated cut, currently #5 and #6 on U.S. Top 10)

Should you watch it?

If you are raunch-com curious or just in the mood for Jonah Hill wrangling feral kids through NYC, it is an 81-minute commitment and streaming right now on HBO Max. There are worse ways to spend a night. And if you want to see where Green went next, his first Halloween entry is streaming free on Tubi.