Movie review: Who ordered the large bomb, hold the laughs?

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This article was published 12/08/2011 (5499 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A movie that advertises the star and director of the zom-com Zombieland effectively promises the thrills and dark humour of that quirky 2009 horror-comedy.

It doesn’t take even 30 minutes to determine that 30 Minutes or Less is not going to deliver. Indeed, by the half-hour mark, you’ll be forced to conclude that the only person more miscast in this movie than star Jesse Eisenberg is director Ruben Fleischer.

The premise, lifted from a grimmer reality, has Eisenberg’s slacker pizza delivery guy Nick knocked unconscious by criminal lowlifes Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson). By the time he regains consciousness, Nick finds himself outfitted with a bomb vest. Dwayne and Travis, disguised in ape masks, inform Nick he has nine hours to pony up $100,000 or he’ll go kablooey.

It emerges that Dwayne needs the dough to finance a hitman to kill his own dad (Fred Ward), a former military man living the self-indulgent life of a lottery millionaire.

Nick has nowhere to turn but his estranged friend Chet (Aziz Ansari), who is somehow convinced to help Nick rob a bank. In the meantime, the designated assassin Chango (Michael Peña), who was referred to Dwayne via a lap dancer, launches his own hunt for the hundred grand.

Ansari, a consistently funny presence in the TV series Parks & Recreation and Human Giant, is the film’s one bright spot, reacting to the situation with just the right note of equal parts outrage and self-preservation. Peña is also clearly having a good time tweaking the Hollywood cholo stereotype with notes of unseemly insecurity.

Eisenberg is adrift. He’s clearly more comfortable in roles that accommodate his intelligence, a la The Social Network, but cast as a slacker everydude, he is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Danny McBride, an actor who tends to specialize in boorish American males, herein officially crosses the line from funny-obnoxious to obnoxious-obnoxious.

Director Fleischer is at sea with Eisenberg. 30 Minutes or Less should have been the kind of fun, slam-bang entertainment of the type that used to be common fodder of the drive-in in the ’70s and ’80s.

Possibly, Fleischer felt he was better than the material, but for whatever reason, he leaches the fun out of it.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

 

MOVIE REVIEW

30 Minutes or Less
Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari
83 minutes
14A
2 stars out of five