Review of 30 Minutes or Less (2011) by Jack F — 09 May 2012

Here we are again, with yet another comedy that falls flat on its face. Given the talent involved in "30 Minutes or Less," I had moderately high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, it ends up on about the same page as the recently reviewed "21 Jump Street": dumb, sporadically amusing, but really not all that funny. Ultimately it's kind of a waste of talent (though thankfully not too much of a waste of time, but we'll get to that in a minute).

The premise: two slacker friends (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) are after the fortune owned by one's father. In order to obtain the inheritance, they decide to have him killed and hire a hitman. However, they need $100,000 to pay the hitman's hefty fee. In order to obtain that kind of loot, they kidnap a hapless pizza delivery boy (Jesse Eisenberg) and strap a bomb to his chest in order to force him to rob a bank. He has 10 hours to make it happen, or the bomb explodes.

Seems a bit strained, doesn't it? As the movie unfolded, I found myself wondering why we needed the inheritance/hitman subplot. Wouldn't it have been enough to simply have the two wannabe criminals force the pizza boy to rob the bank so they could keep the money for themselves? But then I realized that, given how thin the plot is, this extra subplot was a way to keep the movie going; to pad it, if you will. It's only 83 minutes long, which is good in the sense that it doesn't overstay its welcome (although the question of whether this movie was ever "welcome" in the first place is debatable), but it doesn't leave much in terms of story or character development.

Another subplot, involving the sister of the pizza boy's best friend (Aziz Ansari) also feels like padding, as it's mostly irrelevant to the proceedings. Yes, it does cause conflict between Ansari and Eisenberg, but even this feels kind of forced, as I never truly believed the two were actually angry at each other (this falls more on the writing rather than the acting). And though the sister does resurface at the end of the movie, this is actually unnecessary too, when you think about it.

It doesn't say much for the plot of a movie when it has unnecessary subplots for the sole purpose of padding. I mean, seriously, if you took away these two subplots, the movie would probably only be a half hour long. That should have been the filmmakers' first clue that they needed to do a bit of work on the story itself.

The movie does have a few laughs, mostly courtesy of Ansari as the best friend/unwilling accomplice. He has a sort of manic demeanor that is amusing to watch, and he has good timing and delivery. His banter with Eisenberg, particularly in the scenes leading up to the bank robbery, is quite funny. But the laughs are too sporadic, and there's nothing truly memorable. Director Ruben Fleischer previously helmed the outrageously entertaining "Zombieland"--also starring Eisenberg--and there are times here when he employs his kinetic touch to good use. But after the success of the zombie-comedy film, this is definitely a step back.

Truthfully, there's not much you can say about a comedy that doesn't deliver the laughs (whether it be 30 minutes or less or 83 minutes or less). Blah.