Zombieland: I Thought the Apocalypse Would Be More Fun Than This
Let me get the nitpick out of the way up front: Zombies do not run. There. I said it. They don’t run. They shamble. They stagger. They lurch. But they do not run. They’re reanimated corpses without the brain power or muscle tone to do anything more athletic than slowly come at you with the single-minded purpose of turning you into a casserole. To be fair, the zombies in Zombieland are not reanimated dead (or at least not all of them; some of them might be; kind of fuzzy on that) but are instead infected with some form of Mad Cow Disease. So I guess it’s okay that they run. But they’re not zombies.
Okay, nitpick over. On to the movie.
On the surface, this seems like a film tailor-made for yours truly. I like my horror films bloody and my comedy films dark. Combine the two and I should be in multiplex heaven. Yet Zombieland never quite clicked for me the way it seems to for lots of other people, including our own Scuzzbuster. Oh, the tone is fine–dark without being dreary, goofy without being slapstick–and the characters are, for the most part, fun (even if Jesse Eisenberg seems to be doing his best Michael Cera impression most of the time) but it just never fully came together. For me, it was a horror-comedy that offered none of the left side of the hyphen and precious little of the right side.
Most of the best jokes are, as always, in the trailers, and what’s left just doesn’t have a lot of punch. There are a few chuckles here and there, but it all seems so unfocused, so random, possibly because the film itself is a little unfocused. Our survivors have no real plan or goal beyond going to an amusement park to recapture some semblance of pre-zombie life, and Woody Harrelson wants a Twinkee, but that’s about it. Their journey bogs down heavily in the second act when they take refuge in a celebrity’s home and never fully recovers. Maybe part of the problem is that for a movie about the entire United States being populated almost exclusively by zombies, there are precious few zombies to be seen. Even the largest group of zombies numbers maybe fifty, which means our zombie hunters are left with little to do except chat amongst themselves and the dialogue just isn’t that snappy.
I’m not saying it’s a bad film, and I no doubt will hear contradictory arguments from readers (and Scuzz) but for me it just wasn’t as funny as it could or should have been. It was enjoyable, I chuckled, but I also checked my watch quite a bit. Maybe it would have been funnier had I seen it in a theater with more than seven people in it, but a good comedy should have you laughing just as hard if you’re watching it alone as with a crowd. Zombieland never got me laughing and never fully sucked me into its world. Watching it, I found myself wondering why everyone still had electrical power, and how many people, even in Texas, would have riot shotguns and Uzis so readily available.
If you do go, be sure to sit through the ending credits for one last little moment with the film’s big guest star.
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Tags: Movie Reviews
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3 Responses to “Zombieland: I Thought the Apocalypse Would Be More Fun Than This”
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October 6th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
I didn’t need it to be a horror film, personally. It did it for me though. I do agree with your assessment of where the film kind of derails, but I didn’t find it nearly as severe as you did. Ultimately, my feeling is that if you see Zombieland because you’re buying what the trailer is selling, you’ll get your money’s worth. As far as horror, nothing in the trailer made me feel like I should expect a horror film and ultimately, I didn’t get one. I think the film was better for not even trying to hit that road.
October 7th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Understand, I wasn’t expecting a horror film any more than I was from, say, Ghostbusters or Shaun of the Dead. I got pretty much what I expected, which was a quirky comedy with horror trappings. My point was simply that for a horror-comedy, there just wasn’t much of either to be found. If it’s not going to funny, it should be scary. If it’s not going to scary, it should be funny. Again, it’s not a bad film. The tone and style are both fine. I just didn’t think it was all that funny, which meant the whole thing kind of slowed down for me.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:08 am
sticking with the Simpsons for 7 or 8 years too long has numbed you to what’s funny. I don’t think we’ve agreed on a comedy since Naked Gun came out in ‘88