30 Minutes or Less (Sony/Columbia)
Rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity and some violence.
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Aziz Ansari, Nick Swardson, Dilshad Vadsaria, Michael Peña, Bianca Kajlich, Fred Ward.
Written by Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan.
Directed by Ruben Fleischer.
GRADE: C+
REVIEW:Remember that HILARIOUS 2003 story out of Erie, Pennsylvania, where a group of people strapped a bomb to a pizza delivery guy and forced him to rob a bank? Man, that was funny... except for the part where the man was blown up and killed as TV news cameras caught all the action. It's such a funny story, that producer Ben Stiller and his gang of zany filmmaker pals decided to use the premise as the inspiration for
30 Minutes or Less, a raunchy comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg and Danny McBride.
Eisenberg stars as Nick (a pizza delivery guy) with little ambition in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His buddy Chet (Aziz Ansari) is a school teacher whose sister Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria) had a fling with Nick back in high school. Danny McBride stars as Dwayne, a crass idiot who lives as a parasite to his father (Fred Ward), a former Marine who was lucky enough to have won the lottery but uses Dwayne and his pal Travis (Nick Swardson) to do his dirty work around the house.
Dwayne is sick of his abusive dad and takes a hint from a stripper named Juicy (Bianca Kajlich) to hatch a plot and hire her boyfriend Chango (Michael Pena) as a contact killer. Problem is, Chango demands $200,000 for the job, so Dwayne and Travis come up with the idea to kidnap a pizza delivery man, strap a remote-controlled bomb to him, and force him to rob a bank.
That's pretty much what happens. Nick gets Chet to help him rob the local bank. Part of the plot includes the provision that Dwayne and Travis supply Nick with an electronic code to deactivate the bomb vest strapped to him when he delivers the money to Chango. Dwayne fails to give Chango the code, and Nick decides to keep the money until his captors provide the code and release him.
The story comes to an abrupt end after a final confrontation between Nick, Dwayne, Travis and Chango.
I promise not to spoil that abrupt ending entirely, except to say it turns out better for Nick than it did for that poor fellow back in 2003.
30 Minutes or Less is funny at times, thanks to the comic timing and ability of Eisenberg, and to a lesser degree, some of McBride's regular foul antics. The trouble is, there aren't very many funny moments in a film about a rather disturbing real event. If you know anything about
the real "Pizza Bomber," the movie's humor doesn't feel very appropriate, and might conjure up bad memories for anyone who's seen the terrible video of 46-year-old Brian Wells death.
Even with a shaky and perhaps inappropriate inspiration,
30 Minutes or Less will appeal to audince members who like to be entertained with copious amounts of F-bombs, in a styling that only Danny McBride can deliver. Personally, I'm kind of tired of McBride's one-note song in the key of "F." I think that maybe the next time I have a chance to see a McBride film, I might head to the nearest public park restroom and read the walls instead.
