Zombieland Review
Went and saw this on Halloween. In short, it’s a fun movie with some solid performances, good makeup, and is worth seeing if you don’t have any reading to catch up on or other movies that grab your attention.
The Good:
Some of it was quite funny. The “zombies” had good makeup. Bill Murray shows up for a bit.
The Bad:
We’re subjected to some really pointless love interest bits, pointless back story for Harrelson’s character, a total lack of curiosity on the part of everyone, and generally the characters doing things that make you sit back and wonder how they got by before the apocalypse.
The Hideously Stupid:
Voice over? Really? When did this story seem so complex that we needed a fucking narrator a la The Wonder Years? At one point, in this voice over, we get an explanation for the zombies, begging the question “How the fuck do you know that?”, since the narrator is obviously not any older than he is in the film, unlike The Wonder Years, and it’s not like there was anything around to tell him what happened.
General Bits and Bobs:
There was no reason to have the beginning be asynchronous like it was. It added nothing to the story and would have probably worked a touch better just laid out point A to point B style. For that matter, it would have been a lot more interesting to see the main character actually working through the initial days of the outbreak. Instead we end up with something feels like ten minutes of youtube videos spliced into 60 minutes of marginal value and possibly another ten minutes of story relevant comedy. It felt really forced, like it was made by committee.
I can’t help but wonder what it’s like to be the guy they turn to when they want a low rent Michael Cera.