When you dissect 30
Minutes or Less and look at all of its little parts, you realize that it’s
actually composed of two different buddy comedies. There’s one in which fairly
regular twentysomethings Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari get in over their head
when an unlikely series of events forces them into dealings with kidnappers,
police chases, and hired assassins. And there’s one in which perpetual dim bulb
losers Danny McBride and Nick Swardson try to make something of themselves by
clumsily entering the world of crime. Given the proper treatment, either of
these stories could have stood on its own as a full film. But the margin for
error would have been greater. What this movie does is take the two concepts,
smash them together, and give you only the best parts of each, with no filler.
Much like Eisenberg’s speedy delivery pizza boy character, the biggest positive
30 Minutes or Less has going for it
is that it always keeps moving.
The story starts off simple enough, then gets progressively
more complex as best laid plans unravel, but never so much so that you need to
stop and think. The Major (Fred Ward) is an ex-marine hard ass who won it big
in the Lottery. He’s got a layabout cretin of a son named Dwayne (McBride) who
does little with his life other than blow stuff up with his idiot friend Travis
(Swardson) and wait for his dad to die. One day, while in the midst of an
uncomfortably authentic lap dance, Dwayne decides that his best course of
action for finding bliss would be to knock off his pops and collect on his
inheritance before it all gets blown on Winnebagos and decaled pickup trucks.
To that end he must hire an assassin (Michael Peña). But assassins cost money
themselves, so Dwayne and Travis come up with the only logical plan; kidnap a
listless pizza boy named Nick (Eisenberg), strap a bomb to his chest, and force
him to rob a bank of $100 thousand in the next ten hours. Not quite up to the
task on his own, Nick asks his ex-best friend Chet (Ansari) to help him get the
money. Chet is reticent, because he’s still mad that Nick balled his twin
sister, but his conscious makes him go along for the ride anyway. The story is
ridiculous, but 30 Minutes or Less is
just a goofy comedy, so relax and go with it.
Whether or not this movie succeeds in your eyes will depend
entirely on whether or not you enjoy the four actors involved in the parallel
buddy relationships. Each of these guys has their usual bag of tricks that they
go to, and none of them stray too far out of their wheelhouse for this one. But
when they’re paired with decent material I find all of them funny, and the
canvas that director Ruben Fleischer gives them to paint on is more than
serviceable. Eisenberg plays Nick with his usual combo of put upon doormat and
snarky smartass. His character gets the biggest journey to make over the course
of the film, as when we meet him he is stuck in a rut and plodding through a
dead end job, but when put in the life or death situation of having a bomb
strapped to his chest he comes alive and finds a fire that he previously
lacked. As he’s more than proven by now, Eisenberg has more to offer than
comedy, so he handles the light lifting of the minor character work here
without any problem. Ansari brings his usual shtick of fast talking nervous
energy to the table, and he and Eisenberg bounce off of each other well as a
pairing. I especially enjoyed a scene that ended up with them rolling around on
the ground wrestling. Eisenberg starts laying some deep rabbit punches to Ansari’s
thigh, and when Ansari reverses things and applies a rear naked choke, he locks
it in deep as well. That’s some method acting right there.
Danny McBride can be hit or miss for me. I love him in his
HBO show Eastbound and Down, but
haven’t cared for him much in recent film roles (like his cameo in Due Date or his starring turn in Your Highness). I think he works great when he’s doing horribly cruel and
offensive things with a straight face, but he falls apart comedically when
asked to handle wackier or more absurdist stuff. Here he is in full on Kenny
Powers super dick mode, and he made me belly laugh on more than one occasion.
Swardson, conversely, usually plays goofier characters, and can pull absurdist
off under the right circumstances. He needs to be reigned in though. I like him
as his compulsively misbehaved male prostitute character in Reno 911, but when he’s able to go full
on ridiculous in Happy Madison productions (like in Just Go With It or the upcoming Bucky
Larson) I find him to be an annoyance. Here he’s stupid funny instead of
stupid stupid, and like Eisenberg and Ansari, he and McBride work well together
as a duo. Also, some mention should be made of Peña’s turn as the street thug
assassin Chango. Though he gets less screen time than the main four actors, he
may give the funniest performance of the film. And he does it by fully
committing to his ridiculously insecure character and playing things straight
rather than grasping for laughs. That’s always the best kind of comedy. Overly
macho street thugs are funny enough on their own; you don’t have to clown to
get the comedy across.
When a movie is doing straight comedy, all I really ask of
it is that it makes me laugh. 30 Minutes
or Less has a brief runtime of 83 minutes, and it packs every one of those
minutes with great gags and amusing one-liners. If they were going for a more
complex story that asked for more of your time, or if a lot of the jokes fell
flat, then it would have become necessary for the film to go more interesting
places, develop its characters further, or present you with some sort of
thought provoking subtext. Not so here. This movie draws you in, gives you some
guffaws, and sends you out on your way before you have time to think about
anything else. In a film climate where it’s epic blockbuster or nothing, where
even comedies are starting to wear out their welcome with indulgent run times,
I found that to be refreshing. My only complaint is that there’s a beat the
clock element to the story that doesn’t get fully explored. Early on
Eisenberg’s character has a 30-minute timer in his car when he’s delivering
pizzas, and later he has a 10-hour timer on his bomb when he’s trying to find a
hundred grand. In the opening pizza delivery scene we watch the 30-minute timer
tick down, and it lends an exciting energy to the sequence. The 10-hour timer
stays hidden in the background however, and we never really get a sense of how
much time has elapsed or how grave Nick’s situation is. If Fleischer could have
exploited that element to make the story move at even more of a breakneck pace,
to tighten things up even further, and to add some real stakes to the situation,
then this could have become something really special. But, as is, 30 Minutes or Less is already the most
consistently funny comedy I’ve seen this summer anyway. Give it a chance, even
if it’s only to see Nick Swardson kill someone with a flamethrower.
