30 YEARS TO LIFE

It’s not a prison sentence.

Running time: 110 minutes. Rated R (language, sex). At the AMC 42nd Street, the Magic Johnson Theater and the Bay Plaza, The Bronx.

THE difference between “30 Years to Life” and what feels like a glut of ensemble comedies about lovelorn Gen-Xers is the smart dialogue.

Vanessa Middleton, a former “Cosby Show” and “Saturday Night Live” writer making her feature debut, has assembled a clique of familiar, broadly drawn characters, but her film manages to rise above sitcom status, thanks to their sassy repartee. (Unfortunately, a frightful sound mix raises and lowers the volume of their rejoinders inappropriately.)

Each of these six friends, affluent African-American Manhattanites, is mired in a relationship or career quandary (or a combination thereof) that has hit critical mass as the big three-0 approaches.

We meet the hip singletons at a surprise party for Natalie (Melissa De Sousa), a hot-shot Wall Streeter who bursts into tears at the thought of still being single on her milestone birthday.

Joy (Erika Alexander in a button-cute performance) can sympathize: Her boyfriend of four years (T.E. Russell) is a commitment-phobe.

As is Malik (Allen Payne), to whom a mapped-out career looks worse than a prison sentence. Throw in a real estate agent (Paula Jai Parker) locked in an all-consuming struggle with her weight and an angry, failed stand-up comedian (Tracy Morgan), and you get some amusing, sometimes stinging, interplay.

Middleton deals with the various male and female perspectives in an even-handed way, concocting a slice of New York life that’s frothy as meringue pie.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.