Fear not, dear reader, this blog is Confessions of a Single Mind no more. While Rosemary has entertained you with literary allusions and sparkling prose, I've battled off some form of the plague and made a valiant attempt at finishing a thesis. These circumstances when combined with some other mitigating factors (my general sloth, for instance) have conspired to push back what I'm sure is a wildly anticipated first stab at a film review.
And really, what better way to mark one's debut than with a zombie flick? The genre’s been around long enough to produce a few classics, be completely reinvented this decade, and now devolve into satire. Zombieland is the second such “zombie comedy” we’ve seen, following 2003’s Shaun of the Dead. The plot, if you can call it that, follows four survivors of the undead apocalypse traveling to a theme park in Los Angeles. The writers certainly didn’t forget their favorite stereotypes. We’ve got the neurotic loser (Jesse Eisenberg), kick-ass Southerner (Woody Harrelson), and girl power sister duo (Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone). Eisenberg and Harrelson have great chemistry together, and provide the vast majority of the laughs. The first half hour of the film is hilarious in an R-rated Three Stooges sort of way, especially if you have an adolescent sense of humor like me. After that, with the introduction of the two sisters (we’ve officially hit saturation point with Abigail Breslin), the film drags towards its inevitable nerd boy and hot girl fall in love conclusion. There are, after all, only so many ways a zombie can be comically murdered, and at 81 minutes the film’s still too long.
All this being said, if you really don’t want to think for an hour and a half by all means get yourself to a theater for Zombieland. It’s trash entertainment at its finest, and is enlivened by an actually funny Bill Murray (who knew???) and a punk rock soundtrack. Decent comedy from Hollywood is in short supply these days (Tropic Thunder… and what else this decade?), so even though it’s slapstick, crude, and utterly conventional I’m glad I spent the 8 dollars for the matinee.
In sum, Zombieland is proof that the genre probably needs to crawl back into its grave for another couple of decades, but it also shows that Hollywood can make people laugh once every decade or so.
-The Cat
Next Up: Drew Barrymore has fun with Southern stereotypes!
Image courtesy of about.com
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