About.com Rating

Two low-rent hoods kidnap a slacker pizza delivery man, strap a bomb to his chest and force him to rob a bank with his schoolteacher best friend. What kind of wacky shenanigans will these two get into? The answer: not many.

Welcome to 30 Minutes or Less, the second effort from Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer and a movie with an impressive comedy pedigree: in addition to stars Jesse Eisenberg (fresh off an Academy Award nomination) and Danny McBride, the film stars comedians Aziz Ansari and Nick Swardson in major supporting roles.

They're funny, too, even though they (and everyone else involved) are working completely in their respective wheelhouses. That's telling for the movie, which isn't interested in trying anything new or being particularly inventive. It's a movie that makes a half-hearted attempt at being a whole bunch of things, but quickly loses focus in each of them as it morphs into something else.

I'll give the film credit for this: it's the first movie (besides Funny People, I guess) that really knows what to do with Aziz Ansari's comic style. As the best friend of Eisenberg's bomb-strapped pizza man, Ansari is doing his usual shtick: he's all bug-eyed, high-pitched disbelief. It works, though, and his throwaway lines of dialogue are the funniest in the movie. That's the kind of movie 30 Minutes or Less is, I guess -- most of the bigger setpieces fall falt, while all the real laughs are in the margins.

Much of the comic mileage ought to come from the failed efforts of the two inept bankrobbers. Problem is, they're pretty ept.

They rob a bank without a whole lot of difficulty. Their criminal counterparts fare about as well; despite never having masterminded a robbery scheme, McBride and Swardson are pretty consistently successful. That doesn't mean that things don't go wrong on either side, but it's rarely because anyone is totally incompetent. That might have been funny.

What also might have been funny is the explanation for everyone's impressive capabilities, which is sadly underdeveloped: at times, 30 Minutes or Less suggests it might actually be a satire of the ways in which a generation obsessed with pop culture has been sold a false bill of goods by movies. McBride and Swardson learn to be villains from watching Friday the 13th Part 3 and Die Hard, while Eisenberg and Ansari get bickering buddy tips from Lethal Weapon, bank robbing lessons from Point Break and car chase pointers from Beverly Hills Cop. But like a lot of the things that sort of, kind of work in the movie, it's an idea that's only hinted at but never really pays off. And the way the film gradually shifts from a broad, vulgar comedy into a dark, violent action movie was already done to better effect in Pineapple Express, meaning some of the best stuff in the movie is already overly familiar.

At a brief 83 minutes, 30 Minutes or Less feels surprisingly long, most likely because it just sort of rambles from one scene to the next. It's obvious that a lot has been taken out of the movie -- it's patchy and skips around from plot point to plot point without really taking the time to get there -- but it doesn't move at nearly the clip its running time would suggest. It's not a particularly bad movie, but that might be the best thing that can be said about it. There are laughs here and there and some good comic performances (particularly from Ansari), but it's so shaggy and unambitious that it inspires little more than amused indifference. This has been a strong summer for R-rated comedies, and a movie with its sights set as low as 30 Minutes or Less just can't compete.

• 30 Minutes or Less is Rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity and some violence.
• Release Date: 8/12/11
• Running Time: 83 minutes