I’m not the one calling it a great movie. As I said, I went in expecting it to be funny and maybe have some characters that weren’t just boring cliches. My bar for fun brainlessness is set by movies like Austin Powers, A Night at the Roxbury, and The Mask. It’s really not that high.
You know that’s the only reason he’s in the movie, right? You guys are like Woody’s character - all he has to do is show up, and you’re happy. I’m a fan too - of the movies where he actually plays an interesting and/or funny character. There are a lot of such movies. No shortage. Geek references != good movie.
Look, let a professional critic show you how it’s done (link):
Let’s get this out of the way — Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland is not a very good movie. Its third act requires that all the principals suddenly become dumber than the undead who peruse them in order to work, there isn’t an original idea in sight and it labors to reach its barely feature-length running time (85 minutes.) Now that I’ve done my duty as a film critic, I can say as a fan of zombies, sitting through Fleischer’s flawed movie was the most fun I’ve had at the multiplex in quite some time.
“Not a very good movie. I had a lot of fun.” See? It’s not so hard.
As a professional critic, I’m willing to lay out that Zombieland is, in fact, a good movie and there is nothing inconsistent about the third act. Your appeal to authority has failed, Mr. Rakyd.
You know that part near the end when Columbus and Tallahassee are in the snack bar at the amusement park, they hear a noise, and Columbus freaks and fires two shotgun blasts into the door? One high, one low.
Not sure if mine was the intended reaction, but I thought the movie was about to go to a very, VERY dark place. I expected them to find both Wichita and Little Rock lying on the other side, each the recipient of a shotgun shell at high velocity.
“OK, so we’re the last survivors in Zombieland, we survived because we’re smart and capable and have generally stuck with small towns. Zombies occure where there were lots of humans, so we should go to LA. Also, let’s go to a theme park. At night. And turn the lights on.” Not inconsistent at all.
I kinda figured that the whole amusement park bit was fairly deliberate. Zombieland is a depiction of a zombie apocalypse as a never-ending theme park; with the exception of the action sequences and Woody Harrelson’s character, nobody in the movie is actually profoundly negatively impacted by mad human disease.
Instead, they get to run around breaking stuff, sleeping in other people’s houses, randomly killing zombies in cool ways, taking whatever they want whenever they want it, and enjoying the oddly unlimited ammunition, electricity, and gasoline. It’s the zombie apocalypse that people who have zombie survival plans wish they’d get.
Eh, the park was visibly empty of all life or unlife when they entered it, and I could see the big sister just wanting to put a smile on Little Rock’s face.
Jakub, the point of going to Disneyland*, lighting it up in a dark world, and getting to enjoy it all by your yourself isn’t that it’s a plausible thing to do. A lot of post-apocalypse movies are wish-fulfillment.
Also, the point of getting on one of those sky chair rides isn’t that it’s a place where you’re safe from zombies. The point is the imagery of your legs dangling free over a crowd of flesh-eating zombies.
The point of a roadside souvenir shop lit up in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, in the middle of an apocalypse, isn’t that electricity persists. The point is that it looks good visually and serves as a metaphor.
The point of a Hostess truck with nothing but Snowballs piled freely in the back, without racks or boxes, isn’t that Hostess actually transports them that way. The point is that it’s a lot funny when they spill out at Woody Harrelson’s feet.
Sheesh. Are people everywhere this literal-minded? Or is it just people in the Zombieland, Hurt Locker, and Sunshine threads?
Yes. Because it’s a cameo. A cameo serves no real purpose beyond a cheap thrill. That’s the point of one. Now if he’d been top-billed and hyped and then all we got was a quick throwaway gag, yes – I’d be annoyed and disappointed. But he was a C-A-M-E-O. No more, no less.
Look, let a professional critic show you how it’s done
First-time feature director Ruben Fleischer brings impeccable timing and bloodthirsty wit to the proceedings. Cinematographer Michael Bonvillain captures some interesting images amid the post-apocalyptic carnival of carnage, as when he transforms the destruction of a souvenir shop into a rough ballet. There are even a few poignant moments in the movie, but they don’t get in the way of the funny, violent, zombie-killing good time.
Guilty-pleasure movies should not be underestimated. I had a scary-fun-house blast at Zombieland … Director Ruben Fleischer mixes fright and slapstick with bloody glee. And the surprise star cameo is a wowser. Enough said.
And as far as “professional critics” go, I think Time Magazine, LA Times, and Rolling Stone trump the Illinois Times.
Yeah, as much of humorless OCD-man as I have been revealed to be, even I understood this.
I really thought the name of the movie made it obvious. The amusement park where you shoot zombies is Zombieland, but that isn’t just Pacific Playland. It’s the whole damn country. As far as I’m concerned, the actual amusement park was just a slow burn payoff for the fear of clowns bit so the hero could get the girl in the end.
People have to leave the tank sometime. Also, this is the general question of most zombie movies, and at least in Shaun it’s shown that after a day of chaos, the military etc does get it all under control.
Saw it last night, loved it. I had a wonderful time, I laughed a lot, and I enjoyed the final act immensely.
Also, how about Jesse Eisenberg? I’ve seen him now in four films: Roger Dodger, Squid And The Whale, Adventureland, and now Zombieland. I’ve enjoyed him in all those films a great deal, and hope he can branch out into something more than “young Albert Brooks” territory a little.
If they ever make a Guided By Voices biopic, he’s a shoe-in to play Robert Pollard.
Also, is there a rule that in Jesse Eisenberg movies, there must be a song by The Velvet Underground? Not that it’s a bad rule…
Actually, the only thing that slightly took me out of the movie is that he’s clearly playing Michael Cera. Or I don’t know, maybe Michael Cera’s been playing him all this time, I’ve never seen Eisenberg in anything else, but it felt a little goofy just how much his character felt like Cera.
