Review: 30 Minutes or Less

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30 Minutes or LessThe movie 30 Minutes or Less (directed by Ruben Fleischer, Zombieland) is the best comedy opening this weekend. That’s not saying much, but maybe it’s enough. I'm of mixed opinion on this one, as nothing about it was particularly bad, but certainly it never rose to any moments of greatness.

The best comedies for me are first and foremost smart, something to which 30 Minutes or Less, like any Danny McBride flick, could never hope to aspire. Failing to be smart, a good comedy could at least hope to be clever and again, that’s out of McBride’s league. If not smart nor clever, some comedies go for silly or outrageous, but this one is watered-down, middle-of-the-road mediocre.

Danny McBride as Dwayne is a complete loser with no redeeming values.  Resentful of his father (Fred Ward) and hoping to inherit his lottery winnings, Dwayne needs a hitman. To pay the hitman, he enlists the help of his best friend Travis (Nick Swardson) to kidnap someone and force them to rob a bank. The victims are unfortunate pizza delivery boy Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) and his best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari). With a bomb strapped to his chest and the threat of a remote detonator if he talks to the police, Nick has just hours to get the money from the bank and to the hitman.

McBride is just painful in this movie, a psychotic bastard with no redeeming quality. This is entirely alienating to the point where his tired redneck hick schtick fails to elicit a single laugh. This, with the way he mistreats pal Travis, makes it feel like a junkyard version of The Three Stooges. The point of making Dwayne so offensive is both to increase the sense of threat against Nick and also to make it more satisfying when he receives his comeuppance  But McBride goes too far with it, and the comeuppance never really occurs in a satisfying way.

The brightest star in 30 Minutes or Less is Aziz Ansari, whose hyperactive energy keeps things moving along with the best laughs in an otherwise bland movie. He's the foil to Eisenberg's straight man, and together, the pair works well. Eisenberg, true to form, is still a neurotic dweeb, but he exhibits more backbone here than we've ever seen from him, if not a particularly wide range of acting.

Held up against contemporary buddy comedies such as Harold and Kumar, 30 Minutes or Less never quite lives up to the competition. But it is effective as a wild ride/adventure piece. The stunt driving is impressive and included a car chase that is worth at least the cost of a matinee ticket.  Overall, viewers should enjoy it, moreso if they manage to sleep through McBride’s most egregious scenes.