Eastbound meets Parks and Rec
Wed, 14/09/2011 - 17:34 by Gemma Exley
  • 6/10

Oh no, first up, don't Google the video clip of the a real life pizza delivery guy who robbed a bank with a bomb strapped to him in 2003 - we just did and now feel a bit weird, definitely not a LOLfest. Unfortunately neither is 30 Minutes Or Less, which is about a pizza delivery guy who robs a bank with a bomb strapped to him...

If you're a fan of Tom Haverford, Kenny Powers and, erm, Mark Zuckerberg, you might have high hopes for a film starring all three - we did, but unfortunately 30 Minutes Or Less isn't as good as Parks & Recreation, Eastbound & Down or The Social Network, which is a shame. Still, expectations/comparisons aside, it isn't a terrible film - all starts off well as Jesse Eisenberg's Nick dead-pans his way through his shitty pizza job (we'd call it deep-pan delivery) and tries to cling on to his stoner youth with his substitute teacher best friend Chet, played by Aziz Ansari. So far, all very good - especially the knowing gag about Eisenberg not liking Facebook. LIKE!

Meanwhile, in a sub-plot which is unfortunately set to collide, we have Danny McBride's Dwayne and Nick Swardson's Travis bumbling along as a hapless and relatively harmless duo until an encounter with a stripper sets the wheels in motion to kill Dwayne's millionaire dad. How are they going to do it? By holding a pizza delivery guy hostage, strapping a bomb to him and demanding that he rob a bank and hand over the cash so that they can pay an assassin to kill the man and pick up the will - that's how! What could possibly go wrong? Flimsy plot maybe?

But you can't moan too much because the film's biggest plot holes are filled with the best laughs courtesy of Nick and Chet - really we'd happily just have 30 minutes or slightly less of that in an SNL skit. It's unlikely that director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) thinks his audience is made up of idiots - the Cohen brothers could tinker with the same script and no one would call it preposterous, but it does reach a point where the story dissolves in chaos and the screen literally turns into a blazing wreckage ('man on fire - LOL').

There's not meant to be any redeeming social value but it's hard to join the ride when even the guy who's got a bomb strapped to his chest isn't taking things seriously. While the panto foolery works with McBride and Swardson, Ansari and Eisenberg are too much like your funny but very normal mates to be convincing in a heist, which is weird because it's those two who save the film. Can we have another film where they just hang out eating pizza and talking about blowjobs please?

Unlikely to either bomb or blow up.

  • Holy Moly rating:
    • 6/10
  • Release Date: 16th September 2011

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