30 Minutes or Less: There's no gold in this bank caper

Country USA
Language English

Genre: raucous comedy with a potty mouth. Title: 30 Minutes or Less. Approximate time spent laughing: 30 seconds or fewer. Four-letter word ratio: high. Yuks delivered ratio: low. Plunge taken by Jesse Eisenberg after his previous starring role in The Social Network: precipitous. Comparison to the usual Hollywood product rolled off the shelf and delivered in the waning weeks of summer: identical.

Jesse Eisenberg stars in 30 Minutes or Less. YouTube.com

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30 Minutes or Less: the official trailer

But at least it’s short and fast. When director Ruben Fleischer last teamed with Eisenberg, in Zombieland, the result was short and fast and marked by a surprisingly steady flow of amusing banter. Here, the banter is again copious but the surprise ain’t nearly as happy: Much of the amusement goes missing in action. The problem is evident from the moment the first goofball blows up the first watermelon stacked in an elaborate scrapyard that’s long on set design but devoid of point. Yep, from the premise to the performances, everything and everybody just seems to be trying way too hard.

The overeffort begins with the structure. This is a duelling buddy flick, featuring not one but two pairs of slacker pals. Nick the pizza delivery man (Eisenberg) and Chet the substitute teacher (Aziz Ansari) share a sparse apartment in small-town Michigan along with the requisite history of under-achievement. They do not share a keen sexual interest in Chet’s gorgeous twin sister – that distinction belongs exclusively to Nick, and it’s causing some friction in their buddyhood. Meanwhile, pair No. 2 unites Dwayne the foul-mouthed alpha male (a typecast Danny McBride) and his beta companion Travis (Nick Swardson), meek in manner but explosive in his bomb-building abilities – a talent that is ready-aye-ready to serve the premise.

Which is? Well, Dwayne has a Daddy who’s filthy rich from his lottery winnings but dirt poor in parenting skills. Naturally, the son’s plan is to kill Daddy and inherit his millions. Being a natural-born manager, Dwayne opts to delegate the task to a hit man (Michael Pena). But, assassins being an expensive hire, a further act of delegation is required: Kidnap some schnook, say a pizza delivery man, strap a vest-bomb to his chest, then threaten him with detonation unless he robs a bank of the $100,000 that is, apparently, today’s going rate for hit men. (An aside. Reports from the news mill indicate this comic premise actually has a tragic real-life precedent – if so, only in America.)

So the action picks up, as the two pairs of buddies fly off in multiple directions – one holding the cellphone detonator, the other heading out on their forced task of grand larceny. Of course, the inept-bank-robber scenario is a comedic staple, with the gold standard set by Woody Allen in Take the Money and Run. Consequently, we await the bank caper knowing it will provide a litmus test for the entire movie. Alas, no gold here. The scene comes and goes and doesn’t even finish on the podium – worth a mild chuckle, but nothing more.

Everything that follows is cut from the same crazy quilt, the kind where the mania is a lot more persistent than the laughs. As for the quality of the banter, Chet’s comment on his buddy’s battered Ford is a sufficient gauge: “Your car is like garbage. It’s like you got a Mustang, and that Mustang’s got AIDS.” Like, ditto for that dialogue.

Portraying Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, Eisenberg shone because the role allowed him to build considerably on his trademark persona – giving that smart-but-maladroit guy both a sullen confidence and a wickedly hard edge. Now, like McBride, he’s just back conforming to type again, and with a relative dud of a script strapped to his chest. Early on, his character is made to express disdain for Facebook and to insist he’s “off the grid.” Obviously, the line is meant as an in-joke but, delivered with a scowl by Eisenberg, it doesn’t play that way. Nope, it plays like a lament – an actor’s sharp remembrance of things past.

30 Minutes or Less

Directed by Ruben Fleischer

Written by Michael Diliberti

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Aziz Ansari

Classification: 14A

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