30 Minutes or Less [Review by Parsi]

30 Minutes or Less is at best underwhelming.  The performances were meh.  The story was blah. The whole thing is totally forgettable.

Two lazy good-for-nothing idiots Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson) decide they are going to strap a bomb to pizza delivery guy Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) and force him to rob a bank.  The story would seem absurd if it was not pulled straight from the headlines (a recent incident also bears some resemblance).  The plot is strikingly similar in many details.  Those involved in making the film claim that they were not aware of the story (they also claim they are creative and made a good film).

You would imagine that an action-comedy would be pretty fast paced.  Well, you would be wrong.  This film is a complete drag.  The story develops so slowly that you spend most of the film wishing the bomb would just go off.

There are a bunch of half-hearted half-baked sub-plots that are not even worth bothering with.  They never go any place and are not at all interesting.  Imagine an entire film filled with a series of tales by Alyson Hannigan as Michelle in American Pie (minus the last one of course), completely irrelevant and not at all interesting.

As an example, Nick is purportedly in love with his best-friend (and perhaps roommate, it is not entirely clear) Chet’s (Aziz Ansari) sister Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria).  The chemistry between the two is not even mildly evident.  No explanation is ever provided about why he is in love with her, minus one sexual encounter about a decade ago.  I have seen more chemistry between Haus and an Icee.

McBride plays his typical jerk-moron character.  Swardson again plays the naive moron sidekick.  He inexplicably knows how to build a sophisticated bomb, not sure how that happened.  Eisenberg is at home in his furrowed-brow plus pout and long diatribes.  Ansari is bug-eyed and rants.  I don’t think anyone in this cast put any effort into these roles.  The film could easily have been shot over a weekend.

There are really two films spliced together here.  Eisenberg/Ansari are in a poorly made buddy movie (think Superbad).  Swardson/McBride are in a moron movie (think Step Brothers).  Put those two films together mix in a bomb and take out anything funny and you have 30 Minutes or Less.

There are parts of a few scenes between Eisenberg and Ansari that are funny.  Segments of a fight they have after Nick reveals he loves Kate worked.  Besides that there really is nothing.

The scenes between Swardson and McBride are the lowest form of moronic interactions.  They easily could have been replaced with the two of them grunting and banging each other in the head with sticks.

30 Minutes or Less is borderline unwatchable.  It lacks originality and does not even make good use of the actors.

PARSI VERDICT:  Save yourself the time and forget about watching this film.

See what the other half thinks: Haus’s view.