BEFORE: It seems a little off-topic at first, but from what I've heard about this film there are plenty of crimes and criminals, which does justify the link from "21 Jump Street". Jonah Hill carries over, obviously.
THE PLOT: A college student on suspension is coaxed into babysitting the kids next door, though he is fully unprepared for the wild night ahead of him.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Date Night" (Movie #787)
AFTER: When I started in the film business back in the late 1980's, we used to have these things called "music videos" - they were like these 3 or 4-minute commercials for record albums. Oh, yeah, we used to have these things called "record albums", they were little pieces of vinyl or plastic that played music when you put them in a machine.
My first dozen or so jobs were as a production assistant on music videos (or segments for "Sesame Street" that looked just like music videos) for such chart-topping acts as Rick James, Apollonia, Leon Redbone, and the Jeff Healey Band. This meant I'd wake up at an ungodly hour, pick up a van and drive around NY the day before the shoot, picking up anything and everything that was needed - lighting equipment, props, costumes, snacks, beverages, etc. I'd be given a certain amount of petty cash, $100 or $200, and I was expected to save all of the receipts for the things I bought, and return the excess cash at the end of the shoot.
One day, the unthinkable happened, and I lost the envelope with my cash and receipts. I later figured out that the envelope must have fallen off my clipboard when I was at a tollbooth and I had to get out of the van for some reason (I can't remember why, if I missed the coin basket or I just couldn't reach). Rather than tell the shoot's producer what had happened, since I was relying on getting more work from her in the future, I went to an ATM, withdrew $200 and turned that in at the end of the shoot. At the time I was living paycheck-to-paycheck, and $200 was probably half of what I had in the bank, and I think I only earned $100 for the day so the shoot was a loss for me, but I needed to insure that I got more work from that producer.
Long-term, it was the right move. I couldn't have the reputation as a guy who lost receipts, even though it made no sense that I could drive around the city and incur costs, pay for tolls and gas, and still have the full $200 in cash at the end of the day. I was hired to keep track of that money, and I had to be responsible for it, in some form.
The lead character in this film knows nothing about responsibility, and we see an evening in NYC spiral out of control because of it. This, despite the fact that he shouldn't even BE in NYC with his young charges, he was hired to sit at home with them, and make sure they stayed at home, so that when their parents returned home, the kids would be there. At home.
Now, I realize that might make for a boring film, a babysitter at home watching 3 kids, maybe making some popcorn, cleaning up a few messes, what have you. But to have the terms of an agreement so quickly violated calls the whole sequence of events into question. Before you know it, he's got the three kids packed up in the family minivan (which he was also expressly told not to drive) and they're headed for a New York City full of drug dealers, car thieves, gangs and wild parties. And he leaves the kids alone, unsupervised, for long stretches of time. Anyone else having a problem with this? By rights the kids' pictures should have ended up on milk cartons, but since this is a movie, everything works out for the best somehow and everyone has learned a little bit more about themselves. Right.
If you're playing along at home, when you're babysitting three kids, and told not to drive the family car, and there is an unspoken understanding that you are NOT going to drive the kids into Brooklyn and place their lives in jeopardy by not watching them, the best thing to do - scratch that, the ONLY acceptable thing to do when your girlfriend calls and asks you to come to a swingin' party is to say, "I can't do that, not tonight, because I'm babysitting." Sorry, but that's the entire premise of the film, shot down in an instant.
I guess my life is boring, because my day on that music video shoot could have had me involved in a few more wild van chases, screaming at a toll booth clerk "I NEED to have that ENVELOPE!", getting punched out by a gang of bikers, almost getting arrested, and making a few drug deals on the side.
And this is why you may not want to be me, and watch a new film a day for nearly four and a half years - because I spent nearly the whole film watching for NITPICK POINTS, wondering if it's possible to get from upstate New York (?) to midtown, to the Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn, to Chinatown/Lower East Side to Central Park (?) and back upstate all in the same night. I kinda doubt it. I guess it can, if you make a right turn off Houston St. and that takes you to the Central Park Carousel (impossible).
UPDATE: I found a web-site with photos from the film and the shooting locations around NYC. Someone on the IMDB message board was wondering where the suburban scenes were shot, since it doesn't look like Brooklyn, and I think they're right. While IMDB says the film was shot in Manhattan and Brooklyn, I found another web-site that says they had a permit to shoot in Yonkers, so mystery solved. I can almost make a map of their entire journey, from suburban Yonkers to the Brooklyn Historical Society in Brooklyn Heights, to the Grand Prospect Hall in Park Slope. Over to Chinatown in Manhattan, then a jewelry store in Queens (I'm guessing), a bar in Williamsburg and though that party could be set anywhere, if we assume Crown Heights, then logically that carousel is the one in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. NITPICK POINT revoked, but I still think it's a longshot to do all that in a few hours.
Also starring Ari Graynor, Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Iron Man 2"), J.B Smoove (last seen in "We Bought a Zoo"), Max Records (last seen in "Where the Wild Things Are"), Landry Bender, Method Man, Bruce Altman (last seen in "Game Change"), with a cameo from Jackie Hoffman.
RATING: 4 out of 10 cherry bombs
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