After the success of director Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland, I was quite looking forward to his follow up, 30 Minutes Or Less, especially as it reunited him with Zombieland star Jesse Eisenberg, and also featured the brilliant Danny McBride. Sadly, I was disappointed.
Eisenberg plays Nick, a pizza delivery guy, who is kidnapped by two idiotic criminals, Dwayne and Travis (McBride and Nick Swardson) who attach a bomb to his chest, and order him to rob a bank for him, so they can pay for a hit on Dwayne's Father (Fred Ward.) Nick ropes in his best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari) to help him make the big score at the bank.
The main problem with 30 Minutes Or Less is that it's not half as funny as it thinks it is. The amount of times I've seen the whole 'potty mouthed caper' in films now is ridiculous. I don't know if it's me getting old, but swearing every other word is only done by kids who have just discovered how to.
That's not to say the film doesn't have it's amusing moments. McBride, although he is playing the exact same character he ALWAYS plays, is good value at times, and Ansari has a few good comedy moments too. And there's a great car chase sequence set to the classic song 'The Heat Is On'. But other than that, not much hit the target for me.
Luckily, at least, the film is just over 80 minutes long so never really outstays its welcome, and because of that fact it's rarely dull, but it is just a immature throwaway jaunt.
Oddly, Fleischer's next movie is huge sounding period drama Gangster Squad, starring such serious names as Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte and Robert Patrick. Here's hoping he has better material to work with than he did here.
**
Occasionally amusing and exciting, but it's written like a bunch of kids found out how to swear at times, and it's nothing particularly original. Least it's nice and short though.
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