Synopsis:
Nick is a pizza delivery guy going nowhere until he is kidnapped by Dwayne and Travis who strap a bomb to his chest in order to force him to rob a bank for the $100,000 they need to pay a hitman to kill Dwayne’s lottery winning father.
Ruben Fleischer’s follow up to the hit 2009 comedy Zombieland, is the action-comedy 30 Minutes or Less, in which the director is reunited with Jesse Eisenberg. 30 Minutes or Less also features comedy trio Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride and Nick Swardson and includes versatile Michael Pena (who will feature in Fleischer’s Gangster Squad).
Zombieland was a sassy, smart comedy, but fans expecting more of the same from Fleischer’s follow-up will be mainly disappointed. There is quite some potential here but the inclusion of Danny McBride’s crude, crass and vulgar sex jokes are baffling. Considering such base humour is normally aimed at 12 year-old boys, it seems self destructive that the inclusion of such references have caused the film to be given a 15 certificate in the UK and the dreaded R rating in the U.S. And while the film thus alienates a large potential demographic, such humour is too immature to compete with the vast array of adult comedies that have been released in recent months. 30 Minutes Or Less therefore falls between two stalls and as such will not be a commercial success.
Vulgarity aside, the bulk of the laughs are not to be found in the extraordinary situations or the nonsensical actions of the characters, but mostly in the many off-hand comments of Eisenberg and Ansari who have a believable chemistry between them. While not laugh-out-loud funny in many places, the 83 minute run-time goes by in a flash.
