Zombieland

Yeah, I just watched Dance of the Dead recently, which is pretty fun, but some of the character deaths in that seemed a bit arbitrary.

Since we are going into spoiler land and it was already kind of spoiled above…

SPOILERS:
Not knowing that everyone makes it through this one in advance I think would be good. There’s a nice build up of tension and music where it seems it’s about to all got to shit in normal zombie movie fashion for them and especially Tallahassee, but then it doesn’t.

The first ZomRomCom that I know of would be My Boyfriend’s Back from 1993. A fairly inoffensive bit of fluff most notable for it’s sly redneck racism angle.


Johnny: It’s because I’m dead, isn’t it. That’s why you won’t go out with me.

Missy: Don’t insult me.

Johnny: You’re afraid of what people might say, aren’t you. Behind your back, everybody whispering, ‘there goes Missy and the dead kid’!


Written by Dean Lorey (Arrested Development), directed by Bob Balaban (an ‘I know that guy!’), starring Andrew Lowery (Who?) and Traci Lind (Va va voom!), with Matthew Fox (Lost’s Jack Shephard), Philip Seymour Hoffman and a bunch more 'I know that guy!'s (Edward Herrmann, Jay O. Sanders, Mary Beth Hurt, Libby Villari, and Paul Dooley) and a small appearance by Matthew McConaughey in his first film as Guy #2.

It’s the classic story of boy meets girl, boy dies, boy tries to get girl without eating her.

Hmmm… I suppose I could have put that last part better. ahem I liked it enough at the time to recall it now. How well it holds up though, I can’t say.

Funny - I happened to drive by that this weekend and noticed Zombieland and The Hurt Locker on the sign. Was surprised to see they were already showing Zombieland, since they normally run stuff months after release (hence, no surprise seeing Hurt Locker…).

I was just expecting it to be funny, or have interesting characters. Yeah, it’s a boy meets girl zombie movie. With training wheels and painfully obvious life lessons, even by boy meets girl movie standards.

Also this.

My wife soooo doesn’t get the nerdy part of my life, she hates violent movies (although she did okay watching 300), doesn’t get why videogames are fun (other than Wii Sports), but I will convince her to go to this movie sometime this week under the old “dinner and a movie” guise, thank God I can tell her Woody Harrelson is one of the lead characters…that should be enough to get her past the title…She’ll probably think it’s a documentary about dope smokers, then BAM!! Zombie violence and awesome jokes ensue…

I’ll report back on this if it works…

Sounds like we’re in the same boat, robsam, but unfortunately my wife has already seen the trailers. She likes Woody Harrelson but thinks zombies are stupid, and hates violent movies, so I’m pretty sunk. Going to see who else I can rope into going with me.

I actually caught a break last night regarding this, for some reason the Zombieland trailer they showed during the Tennessee-Auburn game last night featured only dialogue between the main characters, the only violence it showed was at the very beginning when a shambling zombie had a piano dropped on it…she must have missed that part, and thought it looked like fun…I’m taking that ball and running with it…

Yeah it’s uhh… definitely bloody. Hell, the first scene in the intro is a zombie throwing up blood.

Obvious troll is obvious.

I bet he likes Sbarro.

Saw it tonight, loved it. Like any good zombie movie it wasn’t about the zombies so much as about the humans.

Quick question – has anybody mentioned Zombieland by name in a tweet and wound up slammed by spambots? I tweeted to a buddy that we should watch it, and ever since then I’ve been barraged with spamtweets, all mentioning the movie by name.

Loved this movie. Just awesome dialogue. And I normally despise Jesse Eisenberg (ever since Roger Dodger) but I liked him a lot in this one. Woody is awesome. Mystery Cameo Person is awesomer. Even Little Miss Sunshine was fun.

I seriously kept thinking this is the closest that we’ve seen to a Left 4 Dead: The Movie. I wonder if the Valve guys are going to sneak a reference or two now into L4D2. Especially in the amusement park level. Or maybe there’s a Zombie Kill of the Week achievement?

That Zombie Kill of the Week bit really did feel like a videogame, didn’t it?

The internal fiction was very Left 4 Dead, but I got more of a Dead Rising vibe. The rollercoaster, the shot of Woody Harrelson with twin chainsaws, and the clown boss, for instance.

BTW, the girl from apartment 406 was played by Amber Heard, who’s excellent in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. I hate to see her stuck in a rut playing bit parts as generic hot chicks, but if she’s going that route, I hope she does more of them as flesh-hungry zombies.

 -Tom

BTW this is playing at the fabled Cinerama in Seattle for those in the area. I’m going to go check it out this weekend.

I went with a pretty non-geekophilic girl and she loved it.

I think it has enough broad appeal. It really isn’t that gory, theme considered. Much more focused on the relationships of the characters.

The whole time they were in the amusement park I was -totally- thinking Left 4 Dead 2.

Saw it this weekend and took some time digesting it.

I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I’ll start this with my usual disclaimer that I’m not a movie guy, so maybe I missed some stuff here.

It did a thing that I don’t like very much where it set up and heavily featured this kids “rules for the zombie apocalypse”, but then it didn’t seem to follow up on it. This is probably a personal nitpick, but I didn’t feel like there were actually 32 rules on that list. I felt there were only as many rules as they showed on screen. When the rules did come up, they seemed to re-use the same ones too often. It was like when a comedian goes to the same joke-well a little too often. I know this complaint is “missing the point of the movie” or whatever. Screw it, it bothered me, so I’m complaining.

It also felt oddly…flat to me. Part of that was certainly intentional, given the tone of the narration and whatnot, but it didn’t quite work for me. Despite some heavy handed character development, I didn’t really get a sense of the characters developing over the course of the movie, and I didn’t feel like there’d been enough of a journey by the end of it. Maybe it’s just my age. I’m comparing it to the great child-on-a-road-trip movies of my youth (it’s like The Wizard, but with zombies instead of Nintendo!), and when they got to the amusement park, they didn’t seem as…affected as they should have. I didn’t really get the sense of relief and joy from Little Rock as I felt I should have. And things like the kid’s shooting lesson with Tallahassee paying off almost immediately after that scene…it felt a little artless.

There were some great scenes (“It’s a Hostess truck.”), and some good performances, but it didn’t quite gel together for me. I saw a review that said it was charming and refreshing, but not a zomcom classic like Shaun of the Dead, and that’s mostly how I feel.

Also, if we’re still playing the “classic zomcom namedrop game”: Dead Heat.

I really liked the driving sequence montage, where it just shows the random road chatter between the characters that are awake, and how they’re starting to interact with each other. The part where Little Rock was trying to explain Hannah Montana was spot on, as I think my niece had that exact same conversation with me once.

Yeah, that was probably my favorite scene in the whole movie. That and the “What do you mean ‘Who’s Willie Nelson’”? I think anybody who interacts with kids (other than their own) has had that moment.

That was actually the point – you don’t need to know what the 32 rules are so much as that he has them. It’s largely to illustrate his neuroses as well as provide humor. Likewise, the callbacks to the rules are just those - callbacks. References to established gags for further humor. It’s exactly why comedians will come back to the same joke later on in a set.

the only violence it showed was at the very beginning when a shambling zombie had a piano dropped on it

Well that’s it sold on me then.