30 Minutes or Less Review

30 Minutes or Less Review

30 Minutes or Less is the follow up to director Ruben Fleischer's underground hit Zombieland. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Zombieland is essentially Shaun of the Dead: American Style. Traditionally follow up films are missing something, they lack the originality, the passion, or the spark that made the first film stand out. 30 Minutes or Less is an example of that slight yet noticeable drop off between film 1 and film 2.

The best way to describe the film is uneven. The intention was to make an action comedy, the result however, is an unbalanced film that really has difficulty blending the two elements. Sometimes the comedy is inspired other times it is insipid; sometimes the action has you on the edge of your seat and sometimes you are yawning.

Jessie Eisenberg plays his usual stammering character, in this case he is the stammering slacker, Nick, who gets high and delivers pizza for a living. His best buddy, Chet, is played by Aziz Ansari, who is best known from his role in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. The two banter over beer, and bicker over past indiscretions. In general they are the best of friends who genuinely care about each other, but don't want the other dating their loved ones.

The flip side of this duo is Dwayne and Travis, played by Danny McBride, and Nick Swardson. These guys are not lovable losers, they are just losers, plain and simple. These two nuckle-heads decide, with some coaxing from their local neighborhood stripper, to hire a "trained assassin" to eliminate Dwayne's father in order to collect his inheritance. The only problem is how to pay the assassin. After much deliberation, Dwayne and Travis decide to strap a bomb to a pizza delivery boy and instruct him to rob a bank. Enter Nick, who just so happens to be said delivery boy. From here the movie cranks things up to 11 and were along for the ride.

Aziz Ansari is really the high point of the movie. He has great comic timing, and delivers many of the films most memorable lines. Jessie Eisenberg seems to play the same character in every movie, and while I think he may have been miscast this time, he still does his thing. Danny McBride needs to find a new schtick. Every movie I see him in is just another variation of his character from Eastbound and Down. Maybe thats all typecasting, but I would hope that his talent is more than pompous jackasses who like to curse and make veiled, or not so veiled, references to his genitalia.

The movie literally shakes a 2 liter bottle of chaos and sprays you in the face with it. It is fast paced and wastes no time delivering the plot in less than 90 minutes. While it tells a straight forward story, and goes from point A to point B in as direct a route as possible, there isn't much breathing room for the characters to develop.

The first victim of this is the Major, played by Fred Ward. He is the ex-marine father that Danny McBride's character wants dead. I couldn't help but feel that his character got the short end of the stick in the editing room. Also lacking any kind of development was Nick's love interest, and Chet's twin sister Kate. There obviously was a plan for a romantic subplot that simply went away when it either slowed the movie down or perhaps just didn't work. The last character that really should have gotten more was the "trained assassin" played by Michael Pena. Essentially just a thug for hire, his character had so many quirks, and great moments that I almost wish there had been more of him in the movie and less of Dwayne.

I liked the movie, but I felt like it could have been much better all around. The comedy could have been better, the action could have been more exciting, and the characters could have been more fleshed out. While 30 Minutes or Less is the kind of short sweet and to the point kind of movie that doesn't need a lot of plot twists or gimmicks to work, it could have used a bit more baking before leaving the oven.