Let's place the obvious right out on the table: 30 Minutes or Less, filmed in Grand Rapids during the Michigan 2010 summer of film incentives, will not be our Grand Torino, the Clint Eastwood movie filmed in Michigan that went on to win accolades and nominations the year it was released.
What we know of the Academy is that they rarely nominate comedies, the last one to garner such critical and numerous nominations being the 1980s cross-dressing romp, Tootsie. The odds are against 30MoL.
The film directed by Ruben Fleischer, the critically acclaimed director of Zombieland, stars The Social Network's Jesse Eisenberg and TV's Parks and Recreation's Aziz Ansari as the reluctant bank robbers who must commit the act before one of them is blown to smithereens.
Fleischer employs the same fast-paced, action-comedy game plan from Zombieland to returning actor Eisenberg's Grand Rapids' pizza delivery guy, whose fairly simple life is upended when he encounters two equally slacker-type criminals in training played by Danny McBride and Nick Swardson.
And while some reviews have been mixed considering this story was loosely based on a 2003 Erie, Penn. bank robbery where a pizza delivery man was killed when the bomb fastened to his neck detonated once he was apprehended by the police, I will leave it up to you to decide if the film is funny or not.
However, what 30MoL does have is that it's a chance for locals to gather together in a dark theatre as they watch the film and whisper to each other as they recognize the many venues and locations that pepper the first major feature to be filmed in our city in a long time.
Editor's note: To the best of my knowledge, the last one of this scale was Hardcore. But I'll save this story for another time.
Admission: Pricing dependent on theatre and show start time.
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