Review: 30 Minutes or Less (2011, Fleischer)
August 20th 2011 22:44
Note: Contains some crude language, much like the film.
30 Minutes or Less (Fleischer, 2011)
Written August 20, 2011
30 Minutes or Less opens to the generic image of a car suspended a few feet off the ground due to the accelerated speed it is traveling. Enter your standard loud and heavy soundtrack and you can clearly picture these images as the car flies through streets, swerving and weaving while we’re greeted to the clock on its dashboard which shows there isn’t much time left to get to the desired location. The owner of the vehicle is Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) and he’s about to be late on a pizza delivery. Like the title employs, his restaurant’s motto is 30 minutes or less or your pizza is free. He expounds upon the teenager buyers that they live two towns away and it’s impossible to get there under 30 minutes. The teens grin cheekily while we sit in our seats wondering why the owner of the restaurant doesn’t have a distance cut-off; does he enjoy losing money left and right?
This is one of many nonsensical plot holes in a film that is uneven, self-aware and crude for the sake of being crude. Directed by Ruben Fleischer (who helmed the fantastically clever Zombieland) 30 Minutes or Less sets up its characters minimally, shifting awkwardly between the protagonists and antagonists. The protagonists, Nick and Chet (Aziz Ansari) talk on a porch and catch us up on the fact that Nick just wants to party but Chet is a real teacher now and needs to you know, sleep, while loser antagonists Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson) blow up watermelons outside.
The barebones plot is as such: a 30-something year old man-child is actually upset that his father treats him like garbage, wishing his son would do something with his life rather than mooching off his money so he decides to off his dad. Of course he can’t just kill him, he needs a plan. In comes the idea to pay someone to kill him – but they need the money. How will they get it? Force someone to rob a bank, of course. But whom? Luckily for them, the commercial for the pizza place comes on TV right while they’re deliberating.
The rest of the film is essentially one note: Nick freaks out in every single scene while Chet provides light, comedic relief to the dire situation of one having a bomb strapped to their chest.
The film is the first optioned screenplay by Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan and their lack of expertise is evident. The overall storyline seems to be an afterthought, a mere excuse for an innumerable amount of dick and pussy jokes, crude descriptions of sexual acts, and overall harsh dialogue. There is nothing wrong with crudity in film, if done right. The writers, however, seem hell-bent on shock value and clearly didn’t put enough thought into their characters or the film’s structure, as much as they did with getting all those zinging one-liners in.
The main problem, aside from the over-compensating crudeness and flimsy storyline, is lack of laughs. A few lines (and the delivery of them) give a chuckle here and there but for the most part it all feels very self-aware and the actors seem to acknowledge this as well. At times it is readily apparent Ansari and Eisenberg are attempting to deliver the lines in such a way that will mask the banality of the dialogue; there’s only so much they can do.
Moreover, it doesn’t feel as though we’re watching characters at all. Instead, it’s Danny McBride, doing what Danny McBride does – he doesn’t seem like a character at all and his casting in the role is one of more obvious casting choices in recent memory. Ansari is essentially his Parks and Recreations character, only more crude. It doesn’t matter we’re told he’s a teacher; we never *feel* that he’s a teacher. And Nick is merely Jesse Eisenberg saying things Jesse Eisenberg normally doesn’t say. And, yes, it’s a shock to hear these words leave his mouth but that’s the most exciting thing about his “character” – that’s its Eisenberg playing him, nothing else. The film attempts to incorporate backstory into the characters in an attempt to give them depth. However, it clear the writers were working with minimal character sketches and their efforts are flimsy and uncreative.
Eisenberg and Ansari have chemistry and in a script that was funnier, less crude and cleverer, they could have been a great comedic duo. Instead, we’re stuck with a story that feels like it could have been told in 30 minutes or less.
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Comment by Dan O.