CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Dan Baker on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on March 21st, 2024, reviewing the new streaming series “Manhunt” – based on the bestseller by James L. Swanson – currently streaming on Apple TV+.
Film Review: Jesse Eisenberg’s ‘30 Minutes or Less’ is Half Funny, Wholly Disappointing
CHICAGO – The new half-unfunny comedy “30 Minutes or Less” stands as a destructive come down for newly minted star Jesse Eisenberg following his high-profile role as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher’s “The Social Network”.
Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
That 2010 film only won three Oscars and racked up another 88 award wins and 79 nominations. Plus “The Social Network” grossed $224 million at the global box office on a production budget of $40 million. And yes, there’s a reason I’m discussing this past Eisenberg film more prominently so far in this review than his current film.
The disparity between those past award wins and that box-office success as compared to Eisenberg’s current film (he voiced the animated film “Rio” between the two) will be light years apart. No Oscar nominations will be earned for this new comedy from first-time writer Michael Diliberti, basically first-time scribe Matthew Sullivan and, most disappointingly, the director of the brilliant and wildly successful Eisenberg film “Zombieland”: Ruben Fleischer.
Read Adam Fendelman’s full review of “30 Minutes or Less”. |
“30 Minutes or Less” especially makes you miss Aaron Sorkin’s fast-paced script that Eisenberg masters in his Facebook film. We don’t know Diliberti and Sullivan and that first-time writing proposition usually either means we get a refreshingly pleasant hit or a catastrophic miss. It flops here.
But most people now know Fleischer from “Zombieland” and Eisenberg from “The Social Network” and anyone’s first impression of “30 Minutes or Less” is that we needed much bigger and better from this talented duo.
This is a “go back to the drawing board” film that cries for a rewrite with the elements that make it funny while scrapping the other half that falls flat. Devastatingly mistaking makeshift witticisms for authentic philistine comedy translates into a film that’s unfunny as a used tampon is appetizing.
These mysterious supporting peeps who feel lucky to have gotten cast include Dilshad Vadsaria, Bianca Kajlich, Sam Johnston, Jack Foley, Elizabeth Wright Shapiro, Brett Gelman, Paul Tierney, Staci Lynn Fletcher and Gary Brichetto from sometimes actually revered director Ruben Fleischer and perhaps-you-shouldn’t-write writers Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan.
The film opened on Aug. 12, 2011 and, thankfully, only clocks in a short running time of 83 minutes so we can quickly go about our lives after we wither away from watching it. “30 Minutes or Less” is rated “R” for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity and some violence, but all that seemingly scandalous stuff still poops out a stillborn flop.
Image credit: Wilson Webb, Columbia TriStar Marketing Group