While The Major has a great life, our hero Nick’s life is terrible. He’s a pizza delivery boy who spends all his time drinking beer and driving around in a battered, past-its-prime Mustang. He’s at odds with his best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari), he’s going nowhere in life, and he’s pretty much miserable whenever he’s sober. Then, one day, a delivery goes horribly wrong and he finds himself wrapped up in Dwayne’s hair-brained scheme to knock off a bank to kill off The Major and get that inheritance that’s due him. Director Ruben Fleisher has proven himself to be adept at handling genre mash-ups (see: Zombieland) in the past, but the mix of comedy, action, and drama is less compelling this time around. If you can say anything about him, it’s that Fleisher knows his way around an action sequence, and he’s also quite good at handling dialog-heavy comedy scenes. Still, it’s a rough mix and kind of scatter shot in a way that Zombieland wasn’t. As for the cast, it’s got some great people: Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, and Nick Swardson as the principles, and even a brief role for Fred Ward, who looks great given his age. The casting is a stretch, to be sure, but another problem is the script. The screenplay, from Michael Diliberti (and Matthew Sullivan), just isn’t as clever as it probably could have been. It’s a pretty straightforward plot with the requisite double- and triple-crosses, but it seems to be really violence-heavy in a way that doesn’t inspire laughter. It’s a little too violent; while it’s slapstick-style violence in spirit, The Three Stooges didn’t bleed or die. The blood isn’t the issue, it’s the death. It’s not funny, cartoony death like in Pineapple Express, it’s unpleasant death. In order for mayhem to be really funny, it has to be over-the-top, and this just doesn’t reach that level. US Correspondent Ron Hogan misses Danny McBride’s mullet. Real or false, that thing was incredible. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.
