Zombieland

*****
Three Stars Out of Five

I really was excited to see "Zombieland." If you know me at all, it's really no secret I'm a fan of the zombie genre. I've got a buttload of zombie movies taking up space on my DVD shelves, one of my favorite comic book series is "The Walking Dead," (soon to be a TV show!), and I enjoy hypothetical discussions with friends that start with "What would you do in the event of a zombie apocalypse?" So, it's a good time to be a zombie fan. Just a few years ago, the classic "Shaun of the Dead" was released, and two years ago brought the excellent "28 Weeks Later." All in all, a solid couple years for zombie lovers, and the news of "Zombieland" only made me more and more excited.

A light-hearted "zomedy" about a world overtaken by zombies? Count me right in. Unfortunately, the end result is just good, not great. And I expected greatness, so I was a little disappointed. It's still an 0ften-funny, sometimes gory black comedy, it just falls short of greatness due to it's lack of zombies for a large chunk of the flick. Who would've thought that a movie with the name "Zombieland" would have so few zombies for it's second act?

The set-up is simple, and pretty much formulaic at this point: a zombie virus breaks out, and pretty much everybody in the world becomes a zombie, minus a few people here and there. The protagonist we follow is a young college student who is roaming around Texas, trying to make his way to Columbus, Ohio, where his family lives. He runs into a guy who absolutely LOVES killing zombies. When the two meet, they do not exchange names - names inevitably lead to connection, so when that person dies (which they probably will, due to the zombies), you feel less because you don't actually know that person. Instead, they call each other by the name of the city they hail from. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is the nerdy college student, and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) is the bad-ass zombie killer. They quickly meet up with two others: a young girl, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), and her older sister, Wichita (Emma Stone). They ultimately decide to head to California where there is an amusement park Little Rock wants to go to. Hell, it's the end of the world. You might as well go nuts on free rollercoasters, right?

Like I said, the plot is rather formulaic for zombie fare, but the movie takes a lighter approach to the zombie apocalypse than most others. Thankfully, we are introduced to the world well after the virus has taken over, so there's no introductory scenes where people struggle with killing their now deceased loved one. It's nice to not have to deal with a 20-minute exposition where the characters have no idea what's going on, while the audience knows full-well how to deal with zombies already.

These aren't typical zombies, either. They're not Romero zombies - the ones that slowly fall towards their prey and generally act like retarded fat kids. Nor are they the Danny Boyle infected - the insanely fast, must-have-been-Olympic-runners-before-being-infected-zombies. Nope, they're kind of a mixture between the two; they run, but not too fast, and it doesn't take a head-shot to put them down. A solid blast to the chest seems to do it here. It's a bit hard to get over not requiring headshots to kill them, but that's a minor grievance that only the most hardened zombie fan will bitch about.

So, in a world with only a few dozen people left, how are they? Well, Tallahassee is awesome, of course. This guy LOVES killing zombies, and he's incredibly good at it, too. He realizes he's smarter than the zombies, and he always keeps this in mind when thinking of new and interesting ways to dispatch these evil shitheads. Columbus is basically a throwaway character. Maybe it's because I'm getting a little tired of the nerd-protagonist who is always uneasy around the attractive girl he's ultimately (and inexplicably) going to get with. Maybe it's because I'm just not a fan of Jesse Eisenberg; he's got a voice that reminds me of a whiny, smart-ass little shit that thinks he knows too much about life, and everything I've seen him in just reminds me of a low-rent Michael Cera (nobody can do angsty-awkwardsness like that kid). Either way, his character is just a bit of a miss for me. Wichita and Little Rock are both good enough, and as characters, they do more than enough to push the narrative forward.

But at the end of the day, we go see zombie movies to see zombies get killed, right? Gorehounds love seeing zombies get dismembered and beheaded in new and interesting ways. This is where the movie hits a glitch. There's not that much zombie-killing to be had, and the deaths that do occur are largely unoriginal. There is a scene early on that promises to be cool, but the kill happens off-screen. That's just a kick in the nuts. The kills we do get to see are pretty funny, but a lot of it is stuff I've seen in other movies, just played for laughs this time instead of jumps. It works for the most part, but nothing here even contends with the lawnmower scene in "Dead Alive," or even the celebrity-lookalike sniping scene from the 2004 remake of "Dawn of the Dead."

In the end, this is a fun diversion for 90 minutes, but it doesn't do anything special(other than an amazingly funny cameo I won't dare spoil) to separate itself from the zombie-crowd. At it's best, the zombie genre offers hopelessness, disarray, and the revelation that humanity is generally the monster, not the undead knocking at the doors. At it's worst, zombie movies are boring, stupid, and derivative of the classics. With "Zombieland," we've got a hybrid on our hands. It defies many of the staples of the genre in favor of laughs, but it forgets to add the laughs in certain scenes. If you're a zombie fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out as it offers an interesting new take on the genre, but doesn't do anything to elevate itself from the crowd. If you don't like zombies, but do like black comedy, I'd say wait for it to hit DVD in a few months and rent it. It's worth seeing because Woody Harrelson is awesome, and there are some cool kill scenes, but don't think this is going to be one of the best zombie movies ever. It's not.