30 Minutes or Less: Critic Reviews

That rare film that exceeds your expectations by a mile.

30 Minutes shouldn't work. But it does. A stoner movie without the spliff smoke, it's proudly, sexually lewd with no cushion of boyish sweetness.

Sometimes a rude and crude comedy is simply scraping the bottom of the barrel, despite the efforts of a talent like Mr. Eisenberg and of second bananas like Mr. Ansari and Mr. Swardson.

It's entirely ridiculous, but it gallops cheerfully along; everything is carried off with flair and ingenuity.

30 Minutes wallows in stupidity without making the bromance bonds believable.

Beholding Eisenberg in Fleischer's relentlessly vulgar and un-funny "30 Minutes or Less" is akin to watching a ring-tested champion punch far below his weight. What a comedown.

It has a miserable start - well, it has a miserable middle, too.

Like his latest, Fleischer's Zombieland borrowed plenty of genre tropes, but paid them back with a self-aware wink. 30 Minutes or Less just takes the money and runs.

A darkly comic underachiever that manages to charm almost in spite of itself, Ruben Fleischer's "30 Minutes or Less" is probably best watched as it was made: without much evident effort.

This is disappointing news, given that the director of this sputter-rev-sputter ride is Ruben Fleischer​ and that nattering Jesse Eisenberg stars.

It's punchy, nasty, laugh-out-loud-funny stuff that doesn't flag or wear out its welcome.

It never reconciles the meticulous intelligence needed to build the weaponry and the monstrous stupidity needed to use it.

Moral of the story: If you occupy the demographic that this film is aimed at, Hollywood doesn't have a very high opinion of you.

The movie ends up being just sharp enough at its peaks to be frustrating in its valleys. But the laughs are there.

The film contains a remarkable level of violence, yet never establishes a tone that would make it seem funny or truly shocking; the jokes flounder in an air of half-hearted spite.

The movie claims to be only 83 minutes long, but it's the longest 83 minutes to come along in quite awhile.

How disappointing to see Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and his "Zombieland" director, Ruben Fleischer, reunited in a low-rent slob comedy.

It's a bit like the Three Stooges on crack -- nutty, loud, profane and full of laughs. It won't change your life and it might hurt your ears, but it should keep you smiling.

The film wallows in such abject stupidity for big chunks of time that the talents of such actors as Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride and Nick Swardson are largely wasted.

Probably has the approximate cultural staying power of its title.

Clocking in at a mercifully short 83 minutes, pic spares us the endless ad-libbing, but isn't nearly as tight as its title implies.

"30 Minutes or Less" may be tasteless, moronic and lacking in any redeeming social value whatsoever. But for me, at least, it was gut-bustingly funny -- perhaps this waning summer season's ultimate guilty pleasure.

There's too much cheese, but there are still enough amusing action beats and funny one-liners to let one say, "30 Minutes or Less" delivers, more or less on time.

In a year lousy with badly written movies filled with phallic fixations, it's a relief to watch one that is happy to be rude good fun without excessive raunch.

30 Minutes or Less is so shallow, self-satisfied, and downright repulsive that I hesitate to discuss it at all. It has none of the qualities of director Fleischer's debut feature, Zombieland, and it's a long way from Eisenberg's...