Film Review: Tongue-in-cheek humor fades into 'Zombieland'
According to movie tradition, a bullet to the brain can drop a zombie. The typically less lethal presence of Bill Murray, however, is all that is needed to stop "Zombieland" dead in its tracks.
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Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg and Abigail Breslin inhabit "Zombieland."
Rated R for horror violence/gore and language
Length: 81 minutes
Released: October 2, 2009 NationwideScore: 3.0
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Director: Ruben FleischerProducer: Gavin Polone
Writer: Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Distributor: Sony/Columbia Pictures
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Usually an onscreen MVP, Murray appears as himself at the midpoint of "Zombieland," in a comic episode that must have seemed cheeky and funny on the page but comes across as smug and winky in the flesh; worse, the teenage lead character's casual reaction to the tragedy that follows Murray's arrival contradicts his earlier presentation as a thoughtful and sympathetic young hero. Consistency is thrown aside for the sake of an elaborate in-joke with a cruel punchline.
From this point on, the movie shambles downhill, culminating in a rote ode to togetherness that represents the worst sort of cynical pandering. (It's OK to laugh at blood and gore if the entrails are tied into a neat bow around a moist package labeled "family.") Too bad, because "Zombieland" begins with a bang, dropping the viewer like a ball dropped onto a foosball board smack dab into the middle of a post-plague America overrun by the ravenous living dead.
We are introduced to this dangerous world through the voiceover narration of a virginal young man dubbed "Columbus," played by Jesse Eisenberg in what is essentially a repeat of his performance in the year's earlier "-land" movie, "Adventureland." A brainy loner who suffers from coulrophobia (the fear of clowns -- a played-for-laughs anxiety that has become a movie and TV cliché), the once meek Columbus has managed to survive in what he calls "the United States of Zombieland" by adhering to an elaborate set of self-prescribed rules ("Rule No. 2 -- Beware of Bathrooms"), which appear onscreen as sometimes animated graphics.
Eventually, the wary Columbus hooks up with the cowboy-like "Tallahassee" (Woody Harrelson) and a pair of sisters, beautiful "Wichita" (Emma Stone, who resembles a tougher and younger Mila Kunis) and tween-age "Little Rock" (Abigail Breslin, the former "Little Miss Sunshine"). The finale returns Eisenberg to an "Adventureland"-like amusement park, where the characters are required to behave like morons to put themselves in harm's way for the sake of "suspense."
Directed by feature newcomer Ruben Fleischer from a script by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, "Zombieland" delivers more splatterific slapstick violence in its first 10 minutes than "Night of the Living Dead" -- the movie that jump-started the still-thriving flesh-eating zombie genre 40 years ago -- did during its entire length. Bullets to the head nothwithstanding, zombies threaten to never die; despite their late start, they now rival vampires as moviedom's most enduring monsters.
-- John Beifuss: 529-2394
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