Thursday, November 12, 2009

When Zombies Attack, Boy Gets Girl



By Alec Horowitz

Three stars

Pity us guys who have to wait for the world to be taken over by zombies in order to get the girl. I keep waiting for something to happen. I go to the movies, saying that one day those hours playing “World of Warcraft” are going to pay off, and I’m going to be the hero as the zombies attack the girl and it’s up to me to save her. Though, lets face it. That’s probably not going to happen. So, lets talk about this in simply movie terms. Zombies are funny. Ok, this movie isn’t the brilliant 2004 British comedy “Shawn of the Dead”, but this is still funny. It stars Woody Harrison as a redneck survivor of the zombie uprising who comes across the narrator of the movie, a nerdy Jesse Eisenberg, who says before Zombieland happened, he was a lonely nerd who spent his weekend playing Word of Warcraft and drinking soda. So, basically, the two comes across Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, and it becomes basically a classic buddy road picture with a gimmick. Though, not a bad one. As I said earlier, zombies are funny.

There’s not too much going on here. They shot zombies, they wreck a store for no reason, Woody Harrison is a crazy redneck, Jesse Eisenberg is an insecure nerd and Emma Stone is really hot. It’s fun viewing to watch and has some good running gags. Though, if there are very few people in the world and the zombies outnumber the humans, than there’s probably a lot of time to kill. They go out and find a mason in Las Angles and there’s a surprise cameo by Bill Muarry, in a funny, funny few scenes. It’s always nice to see Bill Maury. He’s not a zombie, he just dresses like one to stay inspected because he likes to go out and do things. Ok, cool cameo. There’s a great line before he dies asking if he has any regrets, and he goes “Garfield”.

Woody Harrison kills the zombies quick. He’s a mysterious and funny character who obsesses over Twinkies (*cough* product placement) who kills the zombies. Harrison is good at this type of whacky over the top roles. Ok, so this isn’t the place where everyone knows your name, but Harrison knows how to play up the whacky redneck that is on the edge in a world taken over by zombies. There are a lot of guns in these movies, and often when the scenes where the characters are just shooting zombies felt like just watching a live action video game. Was this based on a video game? I goggled it but am still not sure. Just goes to show how on the cutting edge I am on the world of video games that aren’t RPG’s on a computer screen.

The movie makes creative use of a constant list Eisenberg narrates and it keeps coming onto the background of the scenes. One of the items on the list is don’t be a hero, but when it comes time to save the girl from the zombies, what do you think he does? Maybe this is why I enjoyed seeing a movie about Zombies than say, Twilight, a movie about hot vampires who save the day. The Zombies aren’t some supernatural beings, which look like models and care about your feelings. They are blood-sucking monsters like vampires used to be. Classic monsters. It’s up to the normal human guy to save the day and get the girl. Not the other way around. The human guy prevails. It’s in the tradition of Godzilla and every monster movie ever made. The monster being the good guy is relatively new. Maybe the next Zombie movie, the slogan on the poster should be Zombies, the kind of monster vampires used to be.

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