Zombieland!

I felt like this movie could be described as an American cousin to Shaun of the Dead.. although Shaun of more of a spoof with a happy ending, where Zombieland is more of a romp along the lines of Ghostbusters, and.. happy ending? You'll have to decide that for yourself.

 

Opens today, strongest recommendation

 

It's an interesting question, and a lot of reviewers have made the comparison, and then still more reviewers have denounced THOSE reviewers as being lazy.

But the fact is, where before we really only had one legit ZomCom - Shaun of the Dead, now we have two with Zombieland. So the comparisons are inevitable. But they are very different flavors, and Zombieland is not, as one punk on AICN declared, an 'American ripoff of Shaun'.

I am assuming everyone has seen Shaun, and it is one of my favorite movies (it has a permanent place on my Archos 605wifi). But it is a movie about the slow and inept discovery of what would have been painfully obvious to you and me - the fact that somehow over the course of a couple of days, zombies have essentially taken over, and it is a serious serious business. The comedy comes from the two main characters' inability to process this information properly until it is far too late. It is hilarious, but serious, and characters die, and then it has an ending, a resolution, a satisfyingly happy ending.

But Zombieland is different.

(spoileriffic tag used for the protection of those who have yet to see it - don't click here if you don't want to get spoiled, I mean it!)

Spoiler

Zombieland inhabits a different world. In this world, you could perhaps take the Shaun world and take away the happy ending, and then fast-forward perhaps a couple of months, and then tell the stories of those few people who have managed to figure out how to survive. This is not a 'discovery' movie, this movie happens after the discovery, and is about people existing in this new reality. Especially funny is 'Columbus' and his ongoing 'rules of survival', explaining very well how a scrawny fraidy-cat like himself has been able to survive in this zombie-infested world.

And then the contrast is his opposite in Harrelson, who is quite simply a savant at zombie-killing. Once we learn the real reason behind his relentless zombie-killing mania, I personally felt sure he was going to die at the end, as that seems to be the 'rule' for movies like this. And at one point it looked like it was actually going to happen.

But this movie happily breaks the conventional rules, and that is one of the reasons people are having such a blast with it.

And of course ths brings me to the famous 'cameo appearance', the biggest joke in the film. Hmm I still don't want to spoil it, but let's just say, we discover yet another effective way to exist in this new reality, and then the film-makers apparently looked at each other and said to themselves 'Hey wouldn't it be bat-**** funny if we did THIS? And then THIS? And then THAT?? And then if he said THIS? And you know they were cracking u and laughing their butts off just thinking about it, and then that is usually the time when someone sane says yeah, but there's no way we could do that. But they did it anyway. It's a few moments of the breaking-down of the wall between fiction and reality and it is just so bizarre and hilarious, I was asking myself, Did they really just do that??

And then pow, and everyone just sort of shrugs and then the movie just picks right back up where it left off.

The two rapscallion females who hook up with the heroes add exactly what they should have added, which was paternal instinct from one character, and instant yearning love interest in the other.

A couple of words on the film's style.

Either the director saw Snyder's Watchmen and decided to do s sly homage to Watchmen's opening-credits sequence, or we have a compete coincidence. Both are brilliant.

And the constant use of the labeled 'rules' showing on screen at various points only served to make those moments even funnier.

Cardio! Double-Tap!

Bravo!

I could go on and on, but really, the point is that in this movie, even though it is more 'zany' than Shaun, you know that there is never going to be a happy ending. The characters will survive, but they are so crazy and foolish, it probably won't be for too much longer, and there is not going to be any last-minute rescue from the military or anyone else, and the world is not going to wake up the next day to recover and put zombies into talks shows and game shows as Shaun did.

It's a completely different animal.

And I am already chomping to see it again, and already waiting for the DVD to come out so I can give it its permanent home on my PMP alongside Sotd.

Just go and have fun