*puts on the Gene Shallot tie* Greetings, fellow movie goers! It’s Kirby with a movie review for everyone! For my first movie review, I wanted to pick a movie that was comedic, yet potentially ridiculous at the same time! And also something that was currently out! So the obvious choice turned out to be “30 Minutes or Less.”
The basic plot of the movie revolves around 1) Nick, a pizza delivery driver who has trouble keeping the “30 minutes or less” policy of the pizza restaurant, and 2) Dwayne, a deliquent who lives under his father’s domineering shadow. Travis hatches a plan to kill his father, requiring $100,000 to hire the assassin to do the job. And in order to attain the money, Dwayne and his friend Travis both hatch a plan to kidnap someone to do the dirty work for them. Ordering a pizza, Nick ends up getting kidnapped and has a bomb strapped to his chest, being forced to rob a bank in order to save his live, involving his friend Chet in the process.
Here’s the summary of my thoughts on Plot, Impact, Dialogue, and Overall Attitude towards the film!
Plot – 2 / 5 – The plot overall was somewhat predictable throughout most of the film, however, there were some moments (though far and few in between) that stood out, such as the bank robbery scene, and the last few moments of the movie. The plot for this movie seemed to try too hard to be a comedy movie with a plot point as dark as robbery by force.
Impact – 4 / 5 – The movie didn’t have everything going against it! The acting in the movie was superb, in my opinion. The overall emotional connection to the characters was wonderful, and the actors did give it their all for the movie! Plus points go out to Aziz Ansari (Chet) and Jesse Eisenberg (Nick) for standout performance.
Dialogue – 2 / 5 – This movie suffers from a couple of things. While the jokes are there in the movie, they are far in between. What we kinda got instead was plot exposition, filler, with jokes inserted in between. While I do understand the darkness of the movie in it of itself, comedy movies need jokes and funny dialogue. Most jokes were unfunny toilet humor and low brow comedy bits, with a few really good one-liners mixed in.
Overall Attitude – 2/5 – While the acting from all the characters in the movie was superb and wonderful, it doesn’t save it from it’s bad writing and less than stellar humor points. It seemed to be trying too much to be funny. Not to say that the movie wasn’t funny, it just wasn’t funny enough to do well. I can honestly say that I left the movie theater with a neutral outlook on the movie, and it still keeps the impression.
I have to give this movie a 2.5 out of 5 rating.
Movie: 30 Minutes or Less
Run Time: 1 hour, 23 minutes.
Rating: R
Till next time!
~Kirby