30 Minutes or Less

30 Minutes or Less

I should do a little bit more research, but I think it is the first slacker comedy based on a recent true story where a guy got blown up by a bomb he was wearing. You may even remember, from 2003, about that pizza deliveryman who thought of robbing a bank with an explosive strapped around his chest. He didn’t know that it was real and his untrustworthy accomplices betrayed him.

Here’s a movie about someone who drives for a pizzeria in Grand Rapids, Mich. which promises to get your pizza to you in less than thirty minutes. Ultimately making himself out to be some daredevil race car driver (a useful skill to have when you must engage in the obligatory car chase), Nick is played by Jesse Eisenberg as one of those actors whose career decisions can be exceedingly perplexing.

It would be difficult to picture him as stupid as Nick after his excellent performance in that film though. Then imagine George Clooney, Ben Kingsley and John Malkovich playing The Three Stooges.

His best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari) goes ballistic when he discovers Nick has slept with his beautiful twin sister Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria). Problems arise when Nick ends up having nowhere else to go but Chet after doing something like strapping explosives onto his own torso.

How did this happened? We meet two layabout slackers Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson). These guys are so hapless they make $10 an hour cleaning Dwayne’s dad’s pool (Fred Ward).

While getting lap dance one evening, Dwayne reveals that his father won lottery jackpot. Juicy (Bianca Kajlich), the stripper tells him that if he steals one million dollars from his father then she will never leave his lap vacant again. She adds “there’s this guy from Detroit named Chango”(Michael Pena).

Their idea was to order the pizza, strap a bomb on the guy, let him rob the bank and obtain money for Chango. Chango would then kill the old man who had won the lottery. Is there any reason which I must give to say that they are all too dumb to realize it is a crazy plan?

The time bomb’s deadline escalates towards great desperation. The movie’s biggest mistake is in setting the finishing line far away into future. There’s something so irritating about comedies in which a man with a bomb strapped onto his back has time for pointless confrontations with his best friend about things that are not relevant. A comedy between buddies can be less enjoyable when it is placed in such scenario.

A number of moments in this film result into forced laughter. The pursuit is fantastic but then again staging a good chase these days with CGI everywhere seems ordinary. Eisenberg may be an excellent actor but that’s why he isn’t suitable for such an air-headed comedy. The tension over his buddy’s sister seems artificial as well as only one line goes towards fascinating implications that she has a twin sibling.

She is beautiful, but that is the only reason why Kate exists in the first place. She serves as a mere prop to establish her existence and then unceremoniously discarded. Perhaps it would have been better had she been more directly involved or this may simply have exposed what was then an even flimsier plot line. But wouldn’t it be fairer if lap dancer had more time on screen? It’s clear that Hollywood thinks little of you when their target audience consists of people like you.

Watch 30 Minutes or Less For Free On Gomovies.