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38Where the original play "La Ronde" was a social satire about the transmission of venereal disease, 30 Beats is a sickly stepchild.
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Jul 20, 201238There's an argument to be made that sex scenes, done to death, are best left to the imagination - but only if they're replaced by something more interesting. In 30 Beats, the conversational foreplay is hopelessly flaccid.
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Jul 19, 201230The only payoff to Lloyd's structure is that the young actress Condola Rashad, a recent Tony nominee, is allowed to appear in both the film's first scene and its final segment to bring the story full-circle, though her enigmatic, beguiling presence underlines just the sort of energy missing from the rest of the film.
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30Beyond its eye candy, this wisp of a movie, inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's play "La Ronde," offers only hints of the complicated personalities behind the characters' sleek, well-toned surfaces.
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25While it lends itself to some interesting insight on the politics of non-exclusive, fuck-buddy dynamics, its characters are ultimately too one-dimensional and their dialogue too theatrical to sustain an involving cinematic experience.
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25Director Lloyd leaves it all to the imagination, but in a movie this slow and indecisive, the imagination is no longer enough when we've seen stronger stuff elsewhere.
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20Everything that goes around comes around, but the roundelay in 30 Beats comes off, well, a little square.
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20Clearly aiming for high artistic ground, the film doesn't even satisfy on an arousal level, with the discreet nudity and endless yakking not exactly proving a turn-on.
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20It means to be an interconnected story, in which one coupling leads to another in increasingly ridiculous fashion, until you're not only no longer interested, you're grinding your teeth, hoping it will end.
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0It is absolutely terrible.