30 Minutes or Less

First Hit:  A haphazard attempt at comedy and action ending up somewhat lifeless.

Jesse Eisenberg is Nick a lost intelligent young man who delivers pizza for a living. His roommate Chet (played by Aziz Ansari) is a school teacher. They’ve been friends for a long time and the sense is that they are together because they tolerate each other when nobody else can.

Nick is captured by Dwayne (played by Danny McBride) and Travis (played by Nick Swardson) on one of his pizza delivery runs. They tell him that he will rob a bank for them because they've strapped a bomb to him and if he doesn't do this they will detonate the bomb.

Dwayne wants the money so that he can hire Chango (played by Michael Pena) to kill Dwayne’s father “The Major” (played by Fred Ward). Sound a little dumb? It is, and outside of Pena, the scenes and much of the acting in this film is atrocious.

There are some funny lines in this film but for the most part, this film is lost from the get go and stays lost all the way until the end. An example of its stupidity, given Travis' character, where would he get the inkling, intelligence, and know how to build a sophisticated vest bomb which is Nick’s motivation to rob a bank?

Eisenberg is a wonderful actor when in a role that is of intelligence. He was miscast here. Ansari’s first tool of comedy is to be loud and sarcastic. It is more annoying than anything else and there wasn’t anything on the screen that told me that he and Eisenberg had any real friendship chemistry. McBride was painful to watch. It is difficult to act that stupid (as the character called for) and he wasn’t up to it. Swardson was better as he seemed to understand and act his role as both the conscious and supporting friend to McBride. Pena was the only actor that I felt was believable in this unbelievable movie. Dilshad Vadsaria as Kate (Nick’s girlfriend and Chet’s sister) was fine to look at but there is no way that she and Eisenberg made a believable couple. Michael Diliberti wrote this poorly conceived screenplay and Director Ruben Fleischer didn’t help things as all.

Overall: Outside of some funny lines and scenes, this film had no guts or intelligence. It isn’t even worth an “On Demand” look.

Just Go With It

First Hit: Very funny at times, but wallowed at times in poor humor and a mediocre storyline.

I like Adam Sandler (as Danny) much of the time, but the humor in this story at times was unnecessary.

Example: Michael (played by Griffin Gluck), who is plays Aniston's son, takes a crap and does this on Danny's brother Eddie’s (played by Nick Swardson) arm as he sleeps in the bathtub while his arm is draped into the toilet. Why was this scene necessary? It wasn’t.

There are a number of scenes like this. I also thought the opening wedding scene where Danny hears that his wife has been sleeping with other men and that Danny and his sister are ridiculed by having overly prominent noses as the unnecessary setup for Danny to become a plastic surgeon and never let himself get close to a woman.

However as we witness the seamless relationship between Danny and his surgical assistant Katherine (played by Jennifer Aniston) we see some good, funny and interesting acting going on. The basis of the story is that Danny wears a wedding ring to obtain sympathy from women and has intimate temporary relationships with them.

He meets Palmer (played by Brooklyn Decker) and falls in love with her. However she thinks he’s married so Danny tells her he’s getting a divorce. Katherine plays his wife to collaborate his story but it becomes convoluted from there. Additionally, while in Hawaii Katherine runs into her college nemesis Devlin (played by Nicole Kidman).

Some of the scenes with Katherine and Devlin are well done and funny. In the end we all know what’s going to happen.

Sandler is OK, nothing great and generally is playing the same character he always does, semi sensitive and always wisecracking. Aniston is the one of the prizes of this film. She is so easy to believe in her character it just doesn’t look like acting. Gluck played a ridiculous character and he did it poorly. Decker is OK as the young beautiful woman. Kidman is funny in this role and she actually has more facial expressions here than she has shown in the past 3 films - think about her plastic surgery. Allan Loeb and Timothy Dowling wrote the up and down screenplay. Dennis Dugan directed all the scenes good and bad, but overall just an OK movie.

Overall: This is a film that is worth watching on DVD.