America didn’t show this movie much love over the weekend. It opened to a disappointing fifth place at the box office and it looks like I’m once again one of the few people in the country to see a Danny McBride movie (the immensely talented co-star of such duds as Land of the Lost, Your Highness, and now this). I liked this movie somewhat but there’s no denying it’s completely disposable and all but evaporates before your eyes as the final third picks up a pretty slack, formulaic rhythm.
What Works: The plot feels different early on. The general setup (two lowlife goons force a pizza delivery guy to rob a bank by strapping a bomb to his chest…all so they can pay for a hit man to kill one of them’s father so they can get a larger sum of money) is something I’ve never seen done in a comedy. Also, it perfectly captures the way low level crooks come up with half cooked plans within plans, and the movie has an exciting energy during some of the middle scenes.
What Doesn’t: Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, and Danny McBride have a hard time being bad in anything. That being said, none of them are really at their best here. As I said earlier, the entire movie has a very slack, barely-trying rhythm and that’s extremely obvious in the last handful of scenes. Also, you don’t really feel very much for the two heroes, and that’s a big problem given the fact they spend almost the entire movie in a very bad situation.
What I Would Have Done Differently: It’s frustrating because there’s a germ of a good movie here. If they had just cleared away some of the brush, I think it really could have been something. I guess I would have done either one of two things: 1. Add more jokes to this movie, because as is, laughs are few and far between for a comedy, or 2. Not made a comedy. This a pretty good premise for a noir film, and playing the material straight might have been smarter.