A suburban slacker (Jonah Hill, just prior to his dramatic weight loss) agrees to babysit three spoiled kids, then drags them into the city so he can score some coke for a girlfriend and, he thinks, get himself laid in return. As with many R-rated studio comedies, the transgressive humor isn’t nearly as offensive as the phony sentiment that’s supposed to redeem it, supplied here in stale scenes of the sitter bonding with his little charges. You could probably write a dissertation on the movie’s racial anxiety: from a safe and tidy white world, the sitter ventures into an urban nightmare of badass brothas and sistas (though they’re gullible enough to be disarmed by his masterful jive-talking). This repellent dualism is complicated only by the careful addition of a vicious white coke dealer (Sam Rockwell) and a sweet black hottie (Kylie Bunbury) with an inexplicable crush on the obese hero. David Gordon Green (Your Highness) directed.
