Those who lamented that the recent Your Highness didn’t do enough to replicate the stoner comedy meets high-octane thrills of Pineapple Express may just find a worthy successor in 30 Minutes Or Less, a film that—at first glance, anyway—has plenty in common with that surprise hit. Consider the evidence: Like Seth Rogen’s underachieving process server, Jesse Eisenberg’s pizza deliveryman spends his days driving around in a go-nowhere job, until he too is thrust into wildly dangerous circumstances that also somehow involve Danny McBride. This forces him well outside his comfort zone until he finally, at long last, becomes a man. Also, from the looks of things, lots of people get high while shit around them blows up real good.
Of course, 30 Minutes Or Less takes a decidedly more twisty route toward some similar conclusions, with a plot that involves McBride and his flamethrower-wielding criminal crony Nick Swardson strapping a bomb to Eisenberg’s chest and forcing him to rob a bank. (Note: This actually happened.) Somehow Eisenberg convinces his schoolteacher pal Aziz Ansari to come along, despite the fact that Ansari is rightfully suspicious of his friend’s sort-of-unnerving intentions toward his twin sister, and the storyline zigs and zags even more from there.
Not surprisingly, Ansari gets most of the good lines in this brief preview (though McBride offers a typically McBride-y aphorism toward the end), suggesting that if this film ends up being as popular it promises to be, he could be looking at his own James Franco-esque breakout—albeit with slightly less self-satire. It should also go a long way toward confirming that Zombieland’s deft balancing of comedy and action was no fluke for director Ruben Fleischer. All told, this has the makings of an August sleeper hit just like… well, you know.