Out in the UK today, David Gordon Green quickly follows up the disappointing Your Highness with Jonah Hill babysitting comedy The Sitter.

David Gordon Green used to be one of the darlings of the indie scene with early efforts such as George Washington and All The Real Girls storming the festival scene and impressing a hell of a lot of people. Over the last few years though, he’s done a bit of a reversal on what many other filmmakers do by turning in some rather lower brow frat styled comedies which have gotten much more mainstream success but certainly don’t feel like personal pieces. Green himself has been quoted as he just likes making these kinds of films though and I think it would take a hard heart to begrudge him, and especially when you consider that it’s not as if the films are going anywhere. However, with his previous film it seems to be universally acknowledged that he hit a bit of a low, with his most expensive production Your Highness, a film which took a big budget and great talent and drown it all in a fatal wave of lowest common denominator humour and a general lack of real effort from the cast which was felt brutally on screen. Coming out less than a year later is this new effort The Sitter, a film which looks a lot cheaper, less ambitious and based on the marketing probably around the same level of quality, in what seemed to be a worrying trend for Mr DGG.

Noah (Jonah Hill) is an unemployed slacker whose got no purpose in life other than trying to get drug-addled girlfriend Marisa (Ari Graynor) to go down on him. Given the task of babysitting a trio of kids, he soon gets into trouble when he takes them out to score some blow from gym-owning dealer Karl (Sam Rockwell), starting a wild night involving a great many random things.

The Sitter is not a film which feels like it’s taken a lot of effort to put together. On the vast majority of occasions, I would say this would be a major problem but in all honesty for me at least, it felt appropriate and added to the easy-going watch which I sat through merrily for 82 minutes. A massive part of this is down to the comic charms of Jonah Hill. He’s an acquired taste as a great many comedic actors are but if you’ve enjoyed him in his more energetic roles, principally Superbad, you should get a fair bit of mileage out of this. His mix of louder, chest thumping brashness and quieter moments, it which he’s done better as his roles have gone by, manage to make a character who you do genuinely get behind. The emotional arc of his character doesn’t quite gel, a hastily developed relationship with an old classmate is too broadly sketched out and not nearly focused on enough, but he remains funny and affable throughout, and he even manages to smack talk a great many people, big and small, convincingly throughout.

Also as usual Sam Rockwell is an absolute force of nature as Karl the drug dealer who uses replica dinosaur eggs to present his drugs with a little more class. Somewhat believably changing between serious and way too friendly without missing a beat, he’s a real delight with a lot of tics and dialogue which feel made up on the spot and all the funnier for it. Ari Graynor is decently shitty as the bad girlfriend, Max Records is the standout of the kids with a actually rather well done arc for himself and in general the supporting cast all get moments to really stand out and make an impression, Hill also nicely letting others have space to do their thing as well.

The Sitter also fits well into the idea that any film could be made better by being under 90 minutes and at a runtime of only 82, it claps along at a hell of a pace. Within 10 minutes, Hills’ccharacter is babysitting, 5 minutes later the group are off on their adventure and things change at such a pace that if one situation isn’t working for you, another will be along soon enough, something that is helpful as some scenes, an encounter with the police particularly, don’t work too well and actually feel a little sloppily put in.

While not original, fresh or all that significant, as a Friday evening easy watch, The Sitter worked very well for this reviewer. Jonah Hill is solid, the supporting cast are all decent, the laughs come at a decent enough rate and it’s not nearly long enough to even start to try the patience. This is one I think I could watch again, fairly soon, and that is a pleasant surprise. Well done David Gordon Green, you’ve got my attention again.