Zombieland Review: Mindfully Mindless
As a movie, Zombieland very much mirrors the behavior of zombies themselves — relentless, bloodthirsty, and dumb as a lobotomized eighth-grader.
Eschewing any form of social commentary, Zombieland instead opts for a similar tone as that employed by Edgar Wright in his 2004 genre parody Shaun of the Dead by mining zombie killing for laughs — although it’s not nearly as clever nor meta as that film.
Jesse Eisenberg out-Ceras Michael Cera in awkward and neurotic never-been-kissed angst — playing Columbus, a college student studying in Austin, Texas, trying to make his way back to Columbus, Ohio and determine whether his parents have succumbed to the zombie epidemic. The cautious and nervous Columbus at first seems a highly unlikely survivor, but his OCD tics and habits arm him with a zombie survival rulebook in his head to which he is obsessive in adhering.
On his journey back to Columbus, he runs into his complete antithesis — a wildman named Tallahasee (Woody Harrelson), a zombie killer extraordinaire who loves nothing more than to throw caution to the wind — and who seems to be solely motivated by a desire to find the last Twinkie on earth that has not gone past its sell-by date. Harrelson, all crazy eyes and violence, hasn’t been this fun to watch in a long while, and he and Eisenberg make a nice comic duo. Absent of human company for so long, Columbus and Tallahassee decide to stick together, at least for a while, until they are conned out of their car by stolen two young sisters, at which point the two men are brought together with the hope of reaping revenge against the sister thieves. Emma Stone is one of them, engaging with her dark eye shadow and attitude, and Abigail Breslin is the other, played a little too precociously for my liking. And the principal cast is rounded out by Bill Murray in an amusingly arbitrary, if slightly self-indulgent, cameo. My only real criticisms of the film are the lack of other supporting characters, which makes the world of the movie feel a little small, and the fact that the plot is a little too directionless, which makes the climax fall a little flat.
Still, overall this is a promising freshman effort from director Ruben Fleischer, and there are some nice visual flourishes from cinematographer Michael Bonvillain, particularly with the use of the 1000 FPS Phantom camera (for more, read the full interview with our Zombieland insider Kim Winthers). So while this film doesn’t really contribute anything new to the genre, it’s unlikely many people will care. If you are anything like me, then sometimes you are perfectly happy just to sit in front of a giant screen, shovel overpriced popcorn into your mouth, and zone out for a couple of hours. If you arrive with those expectations, then Zombieland delivers.
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
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