Zombieland

From now on, I'm going to stay the hell off Twitter the weekend a movie comes out that I'm really looking forward to, because if it's even halfway decent, people on Twitter are guaranteed to overpraise the fuck out of it. And then when I go see it, it's inevitably a letdown.

In 2009, there have been two such films: Star Trek and Zombieland. If Twitter users and their overly-enthusiastic tweets were to be believed, both ranked among the greatest cinematic achievements of all time. And they don't. They really, really don't. Especially in the case of Zombieland.

Spoilers follow...

I mean, it's not a bad movie. I liked it. But I liked it more for the novelty of it being a zombie-comedy, as opposed to it being either a good zombie film or a good comedy. (And as far as zombie-comedies go, Shaun of the Dead was roughly a hundred times better.)

In particular, the zombie parts felt really flat once the film gets past the opening credits and Columbus's list of rules. At no point, not even during the climax, did I feel like I was seeing anything that, as a big fan of zombie films, was especially memorable. In fact, for a movie called Zombieland, the zombies often felt somewhat extraneous to the plot, like they were just tossed in whenever the filmmakers felt we needed a break from Woody Harrelson's schtick.

The comedy bits work somewhat better, although even there, I don't think the film has a single really big laugh in it. The closest it gets is Bill Murray's cameo, which, while great, was again more the novelty of seeing a Bill Murray cameo than anything he actually said or did.

I think my biggest problem is that so much of the film's plot felt contrived. The girls rob the first survivors they meet just because. They're on their way to Pacific Playland just because. Tallahassee obsesses over Twinkies just because. (And there's no way you can convince me that in a cross-country trip, they wouldn't have passed hundreds of stores that had Twinkies in stock.) A zombie road trip film isn't a bad idea, but it could have been executed a lot better.

The real strength of the film isn't the zombies or the plot, it's the characters. I thought the "no names" gimmick was sort of dumb, but Harrleson was mostly a blast, and with Columbus, I appreciated finally having a character in a zombie film who acts like he's actually seen a zombie film. And of course, it goes without saying that Emma Stone is...wait, let me do a quick age check on IMDB...yeah, okay, I'm good...smoking hot.

Everything about the film is good. It's just that given the premise, the really kick-ass trailer, and those damn Twitter users, I was expecting great. Zombieland is a lot of things, but great isn't one of them. Hopefully, there'll be a sequel where this will be rectified.

Script: B-
Acting: B+
Gore: C+
Overall: B-