“30 Minutes or Less” begins with a beat up old Mustang flying through the streets of Grand Rapids with driving that might have made Steve McQueen proud. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie would probably have made him wish he was locked back up in the prison camp from “The Great Escape.”
Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is the pizza-delivering driver racing against the clock in the opening sequence. He hates his job but apparently has no wish to improve his life either; his only ambitions are to watch “Lethal Weapon” movies and play video games.
Meanwhile, village idiot Dwayne (Danny McBride) conceives a plan to murder his lottery-winning, strict Marine father (a grumpy Fred Ward) while receiving a lap dance from favorite stripper Juicy (Bianca Kajlich). Juicy knows a gun for hire (Michael Peña) who will do the job for $100,000.
Dwayne has high-minded plans for his father’s money: open a tanning salon that fronts as a prostitution ring. So he enlists pushover pal and explosives expert (how are those congruent?) Travis (Nick Swardson) to help hatch a scheme to get the money. Step one is ordering a pizza to bring their quarry to them. Step two is strap a bomb to him and let him worry about getting the dough. Nick is the unlucky sap who delivers the pizza.
From there, Nick has to reconcile with ex-friend Chet (Aziz Ansari) and scheme to rob a local bank while avoiding exploding and/or getting caught by the cops.
Absurdist comedies need a sympathetic core – “There’s Something About Mary” doesn’t work without Ben Stiller being an average schmo in love who suffers some crazy circumstances. Director Ruben Fleischer and screenwriter Michael Diliberti never give Nick any appealing qualities. Their idea of Dwayne using his knowledge of 1980s action movie villains to create his criminal persona has comic merit, but never is fleshed out fully. The basic premise has possibility; what would have made it work better would have been either to add some depth to the main characters or make it a straight action thriller.
Eisenberg, for his part, is lackluster and bumbling. Only when he has scenes with object-of-his-affection Kate (Dilshad Valsaria) does he show any signs of life. Ansari is better as the reluctant sidekick. McBride and Swardson never hit their stride as the villains, relying more on vulgarity than anything else for laughs. Just once it would be nice to see McBride make it through an entire scene in any movie without cursing.
“30 Minutes or Less” is a lot like cheap pizza served up by a national chain: stale and cardboard-like. By the end, you end up wishing that the title applied to the movie’s running time.
DIRECTOR: Ruben Fleischer SCREENWRITER: Michael Diliberti PRODUCERS: Monica Levin, Brian Levy CAST: Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, Nick Swardson RUN TIME: 83 minutes MPAA RATING: R
