Culturebox: 30 Minutes or Less

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movies 30 Minutes or Less One of the great disappointments of my cinematic year. By Dana Stevens Posted Friday, Aug. 12, 2011, at 11:02 AM ET 30 Minutes or Less (Columbia Pictures), the second feature from director Ruben Fleischer, counts as one of the great disappointments of my cinematic year so far. Not because it's such a terrible movie--like most summer comedies, it has scattershot moments of mirth--but because I had such high hopes. Fleischer's first film, Zombieland (2009), was the kind of debut that gets you excited about a filmmaker's future: a dystopic road movie that struck just the right balance between dark social satire and wistful romance, and starred Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Bill Murray, all seeming to enjoy themselves hugely. If Zombieland was a freshman effort that felt surprisingly accomplished, 30 Minutes or Less is a second movie that feels more like a first: slipshod, derivative, and unsure what tone to take toward its own sometimes distasteful subject matter. Still, there's enough to like about 30 Minutes or Less that I want to sit Fleischer down as a kindly aunt might pigeonhole her wayward nephew and lecture him on what he could have done differently. Structurally, 30 Minutes makes the mistake of wanting to combine Tarantino-style comic violence with soft-hearted moments of brotherly bonding. The two villains--a pair of dumb-and-dumber redneck hooligans played by Danny McBride and Nick Swardson--get established early on as selfish, amoral jerks, so when we're asked later in the movie to invest emotionally in their friendship, it's simply confusing. And the relationship between the two heroes, pizza-delivering slacker Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) and fussbudget schoolteacher Chet (Aziz Ansari) is sketched out so hastily that we never quite know why to root for them either other than, well, they're the protagonists. To continue reading, click here. Dana Stevens is Slate's movie critic. E-mail her at slatemovies@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Lithwick: The GOP's Scurrilous Attempts To Undermine the National Labor Relations Board The Guy Who Downgraded America's Credit Rating Is an Old Friend of Mine. Here's What He's Like. How Far Do I Have To Ride My Bike To Offset the Energy It Took To Make It?	Advertisement
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