30 Beats: Critic Reviews

This wisp of a movie, inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's play "La Ronde," offers only hints of the complicated personalities behind the characters' sleek, well-toned surfaces.

It is absolutely terrible.

"30 Beats" goes on to a meandering orgasm of multiple, less-than-dangerous liaisons meant to titillate, fascinate and illuminate. But once the sweat dries, it irritates.

It means to be an interconnected story, in which one coupling leads to another in increasingly ridiculous fashion, until you're not only no longer interested, you're grinding your teeth, hoping it will end.

Under the circumstances, even first-rate New York stage actors like Thomas Sadoski and Justin Kirk seem uncertain and tentative.

The jazz-scored pic relies heavily on quirkiness to round out shaky characterizations and inject interest into otherwise forgettable pairings.

In "30 Beats," the conversational foreplay is hopelessly flaccid.

This umpteenth variation on Schnitzler's classic play La Ronde fails to arouse.

Despite the presence of such actors as Lee Pace, Jennifer Tilly, Justin Kirk, Thomas Sadoski and Paz de la Huerta, there is no character insight allowed by the bumper-car storytelling.

A date movie for narcoleptics.

As an experiment, 30 Beats is an uneven, if not entirely uninteresting, failure. In its attempt to be modern and titillating, it actually distances and confounds.

The characters are props in what's essentially a lame screenwriting exercise.

A sexy, smart and sophisticated exploration of sex, love and everything in between.

A clever storytelling structure can easily be reduced to a mere gimmick when there's no story of worth to tell.

[VIDEO ESSAY] Marginally enhanced by the presence of a few experienced actors (Jennifer Tilly, Paz De La Huerta, Lee Pace), writer-director Alexis Lloyd's Manhattan-set sexual roundelay is a shoddy feature debut.

The actors barely seem to dip their toes into these scenes, even when they're involved in a menage a trois or an elaborate bondage scheme.

A heat wave draws a group of New Yorkers into a ring of seduction and desire in this shoddy exercise marked by posturing and pretention.

While it lends itself to some interesting insight on the politics of non-exclusive, ****-buddy dynamics, its characters are ultimately too one-dimensional and their dialogue too theatrical to sustain an involving cinematic experience.

Unfortunately, the filmmaker mistakes inertia for sensuality, keeping the material in a frustrating state of paralysis.

Where the original play "La Ronde" was a social satire about the transmission of venereal disease, "30 Beats" is a sickly stepchild.

That's all that happens: drift from one unrealized, uninteresting character to another.

The flaccid execution of this promiscuous-New Yorkers circle jerk is more worthy of the clap than a round of applause.