Talk about downward mobility. Jesse Eisenberg has followed his Oscar- nominated role as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” with a low-budget slacker com edy that casts him as a pizza delivery boy forced into a bank robbery by having a bomb strapped to his chest.
Loosely inspired by a real-life 2003 Pennsylvania case with a far less funny ending, “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.
Made after “The Social Network” but before its release last fall, Eisenberg’s reunion with “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer has Eisenberg playing a vastly less smart character than Zuckerberg.
The unemployed 30-something villains — Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, much funnier than usual — literally order our dope-smoking hero up when they need a patsy to facilitate a breathtakingly idiotic money-making scheme.
They need $100,000 to pay a contract killer (Michael Pena) to bump off McBride’s father (Fred Ward). When McBride inherits dad’s lottery winnings, they plan to open the first brothel in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Wearing gorilla masks, they call Eisenberg, knock him out and put him in an explosive vest with a timer set to go off in 24 hours.
When Eisenberg comes to, they tell him they’ll give him the code to disarm the vest if he robs the local bank for them.
Warned not to contact the authorities or McBride will detonate the vest with a cellphone, the terrified Eisenberg recruits his understandably reluctant roommate. He’s a lazy substitute teacher (Aziz Ansari) who’s upset that Eisenberg has slept with Ansari’s sister (Dilshad Vadsaria).
The robbery itself is an amusing spoof of “Dog Day Afternoon” — absent the pizza delivery and “Attica, Attica” — that the two bungling robbers somehow pull off, much to their amazement.
They manage to elude the cops in a well-staged chase. But getting the money to the bickering bad guys proves hilariously problematic.
Running just 83 minutes with credits, this movie moves like lightning — and just barely manages to avoid wearing out its welcome.
Fleischer deftly deploys his ensemble, with Pena demonstrating a previously unsuspected comic flair, and Bianca Kajlich also getting belly laughs as his prostitute girlfriend.
McBride, whose sometimes overbearing comic touch was most recently demonstrated in “Your Highness,” is well teamed with Swardson, a frequent Adam Sandler collaborator.
Eisenberg’s acting chops create suspense about his character’s fate and, even more important, keep the film from veering entirely into silliness.
Eisenberg has great chemistry with the equally manic Ansari, best-known for TV’s “Parks and Recreation.”
It may be petty larceny under the circumstances, but Ansari pretty much steals “30 Minutes or Less.”