30 Minutes or Less (2011)

Wonderfully offbeat film!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is a slacker smart-mouthed pizza delivery guy. His best friend is Chet (Aziz Ansari). He's also in love with Chet's twin Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria). Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson) are two idiot wannabe criminals. Dwayne is belittled by his father The Major (Fred Ward). He comes up with an idea to force the pizza boy to steal $100k for them by strapping him to a bomb. He wants the money to pay hit-man Chango (Michael Peña) to kill The Major whom he finds through stripper Juicy (Bianca Kajlich). Nick gets Chet to join him in a crime spree.The movie is split into two main and one minor duo. The group is full of funny people. I really like Eisenberg with Ansari. Ansari is a hilarious guy and there is great chemistry. McBride and Swardson are uneven. They get tiresome with them doing their bit. They keep disrupting the fun with Eisenberg and Ansari. I wish they stay with them while having less time with McBride and Swardson. The two wacky idiots could be much funnier with shorter and harder hits.

The second feature film from Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer (but not the same film's writers) is ostensibly an "original" comedy, but borrows heavily from the true case of a pizza delivery guy who got kidnapped by two crooks, strapped with a bomb and forced to go and rob a bank. In his case it was not a comedy at all, and the guy did die (the bomb was also strapped to his head, kind of a different and more f***ed-up scenario this film wouldn't touch even if it could try). But for Fleischer and company, who needs to make it all dramatic? Or even make much sense in terms of plot? The movie carries its moments, mostly through improvisation (or what would appear to be just going off on small tangents by actors like Danny McBride and Jesse Eisenberg, the latter the pizza guy who gets the bomb strapped to him by McBride and his co-hort). And there were even those few moments where I found myself laughing hard at the actors' repore, especially when Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari get into a good groove riffing off each other about, say, their foolishness in messing each other's respective ex-girlfriends and/or sisters. And the actual bank robbery carries some real thrills (if capped by a mediocre car chase aided by some weak 80's car-chase parody).Ultimately I couldn't get over how needlessly complicated the plot was in McBride's plot to knock off his father, played by Fred Ward (who actually steals his scenes completely as a crazed ex-Major who won the lottery), as a plot to make millions comes down to a pizza delivery boy. Perhaps if Elmore Leonard was brought in for a rewrite it could've been made brilliant.As it stands it's a stupid story perked up by a stupid series of comic-suspense set-pieces as Eisenberg and Anzari prepare for the robbery. For some the crazy hijinks will be enough. For me, it could have done a lot more, despite the principal cast members doing their best to bring it up to something better.

I expected better from the director of Zombieland. A pizza delivery guy is kidnapped by 2 criminals and has a bomb strapped to his chest. He has 10 hours to rob a bank or he will explode. This movie clearly wanted to be a comedy but the writer forgot to include any actual jokes. Are the makers of this film so deluded they think characters swearing and making vulgar jokes is actually funny? The only achievement of this aggressively forgettable comedy is making Jesse Eisenberg unlikable, which is pretty impressive. Aside from some admittedly suspenseful car chases and some good direction, this is as unlikable as they come. You know a film's in trouble when the only funny scene takes place during a bank robbery. This movie is literally unpleasant characters being horrible to each other for 83 minutes. It's about as funny as Crash, and more depressing than funny.The acting is pretty weak, with everyone playing an unlikable character. This movie is yet more evidence that making the jokes ruder doesn't make them funnier. I barely laughed because I couldn't even see any jokes, just loads of vulgar dialogue which was being mistaken for jokes. If this is you type of humour, maybe you'll find this funny but a lot of people will hate it. It's racist, sexist, mean spirited and truly ugly, and as it's less than 90 minutes long it feels rushed and unforgivably slight. It's depressing to see the director of Zombieland waste his evident talents on this rubbish, and not even his talents can save this nauseating, reprehensible, numbingly unfunny and totally rotten movie. You may want to bring the sick bags.3/10

I'm a ticking time bomb, as this movie makes me anger than make me laughs. I love dark comedies, but I'm sorry, but I can't find this movie, that funny, knowing that the plot is very loosely based on a tragedy event that claim somebody life. In 2003, Brian Wells was an American pizza delivery man who was forced to rob a bank due to a bomb fastened to his chest. After he was apprehended by the police for robbing a bank, the bomb exploded, killing him. The bizarre affair was subject to much attention in the mass media. The producers deny having prior knowledge of that event, but I have to say that, the film is way too similar to the real events that they have to be lying. The movie really lacks creatively. Directed by Ruben Fleischer, in the film, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is a slacker pizza delivery driver that got a bomb fastened to his chest by two slackers Dwayne King (Danny McBride) and Travis Cord (Nick Swardson), whom plan is to use the driver to steal money from the bank to hire an assassin to kill Dwayne's father, the Major (Fred Ward), and get his inheritance money. Indeed, the rating R movie plays on the really dark comedy that might be disturbing to some viewers. The movie doesn't really have any smart jokes, as it plays upon thoughtless crude humor to get around, it's 82 minutes running time. For a movie that says a lot can happen in 30 minutes. There was little to no sense of time in the film. If the movie made the scenes, more tense or funny. Maybe, the film could had work, but no. The film goes really have a lot of filler scenes full of product placements. I guess, Nissan must have paid a lot of money to show off that nicely restored Datsun. Also Arby's and 5-Hour Energy drinks. It's weird that all laptops seem to be Sony Vaio! Honestly, did the companies being feature in the film, know what film, they are helping fund? Being associated to this film is such bad PR. With all that money that the movie got from product placement, you would think they would hired better writers? The movie also really tries it's hardest to degrade women to the point, it was a bit overbearing, how crude the sexual remarks were. The continuous running gag of the two slackers wanting to start a prostitution ring became less and less funny, and more disturbing by the second. By the end of the film, it felt like the movie was stating out women only purpose of living are to be sex toys to men. Nudity is just there to show that viewpoint. Women are not put in a positive light at all. It wasn't needed to run the joke to the ground, to the point, that it got muddy, and tasteless. The brick jokes even fall flat. There is plenty of action scenes that were performance, most wasn't that bad. Once again, the movie really depends on unrealistic slapstick humor to get around, and its shows that most of the jokes in the movie are that. The foul language doesn't help make the jokes, funnier. Some of them, seem oddly place within the dialogue. Really derogatory terms, name calling. Most of the characters are unsympathetic unlikeable people that is hard to root for. Even Nick is a jerk-ass. The acting is alright, but if anybody states out in their role is Aziz Ansari as Chat, Nick's best friend. There is an alternate ending that maybe is worth checking out, if you do, end up watching this film. Most of this alternate ending just follow the post-credits scene. I do find the movie lacking a message. Honestly, without spoiling it, how in the end, did everybody get out scots free!? What was learn? Nothing, really. No big punch line to the whole film. It was one big Shaggy Dog story. This movie is a extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax or a pointless punchline. Overall: I will drop an F-Bomb here and say this movie: fails to entertain me. It was just disappointing.