Zombieland (2009)

Directed by: Ruben Fleischer

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg

***

Is it fair to bring up the inevitable comparison between Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead? Fair or not, it is inevitable but I'll try to keep it to a minimum because while they are similar in concept, they are two distinct films. I think why the recent trend of zombie movie spoofs and comedies work is because beneath the gore and shock horrors of your typical zombie film there are simply ugly, bleeding people walking around really slowly biting people who seem to have a hard time running away from the slowest moving creatures alive (or dead). These zombie movies are perhaps more ripe for parody than any other genre. It only a matter of time before the people who brought you Scary Movie and Date Movie and Superhero Movie and every other cheap spoof will bring you Zombie Movie. It will make more money that Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead combined and it will be horrible, except maybe for the scene with the hot naked zombie running around, that part will be good.

In Zombieland, like every zombie film, we're introduced to a desolate world that's been plagued by a virus leaving very few alive. Columbus as we know him (Jesse Eisenberg) is one of those few. I know what you're thinking. How did the non-athletic, nervous, virgin manage to live this long in a world full of flesh eating monsters? And yes, Eisenberg is a non-athletic, nervous virgin in this film too. Well in addition to those three traits, Columbus is also overly cautious. He has a list of thirty one rules that he follows religiously in order to ensure his survival, rules that pop up on screen to remind us of them each time he follows one appropriately, or on occasion, when he fails to and pays the consequences. Soon he meets his polar opposite, the gun-toting, fearless, twinkee craving Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who's calling in life, or at least best skill is zombie killing. Against their better judgement, the two travel together, kill zombies that get in their way and share some humorous banter that highlights their differences.

It isn't really until two conning sister's, Witchita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) steal their truck and guns that there's any real conflict. Very quickly, however, Columbus and Tallahassee find a better truck with more guns in it, so that's good, but then the girls steal that one too. Unfortunately, it appeared that director Ruben Fleischer took a page out of the Cormac McCarthy adaptation of The Road rather than sticking with its cousin picture Shaun of the Dead. One of my biggest critiques of The Road was the film relied solely on a desolate world and some canibles roaming around as its conflict. Zombieland has its protagonists roaming around a desolate world, trying to avoid being eaten. This is essentially what made up the majority of this movie.

However, Jesse Eisenberg wouldn't be the star of this film if there wasn't one more layer to this movie. It is what makes Zombieland better than a movie like The Road even if it doesn't quite reach the caliber of Shaun of the Dead. Columbus' one desire when it comes to girls is not so much to have sex with them, although I'm sure he wouldn't scoff at the idea, but to pull their hair back behind their ear. The film is very effective in making this desire familiar at least to this twenty-five year old. I think the sensuality of that brushing the hair back is real and in this instance more effective than Columbus just trying to get laid. My concern for Eisenberg's range presented themselves after seeing Adventureland but with that movie I just loved his character so much I didn't care. I acknowledged how much better an actor he is than Michael Cera and cursed his repuation as a poor man's Cera. In Zombieland, my concern mounted because for starters, the film nor the character are as good, but the character is the same. Like I mentioned, he's a non-athletic, nervous, overly cautious virgin. Fortunately, Eisenberg doesn't rely on his dry sense of humor to completely carry his characters the way Cera has begun doing. He's a very good actor, at least in the character he's continuing to play and if that's all I see of him until he's too old to play post-teenage angst, I think I'll continue to enjoy it.

Story and conflicts aside, the biggest difference I found between Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead was in how funny each one of them is. With the exception of just one scene, I didn't find Zombieland laugh out loud funny. There were some humorous moments and some clever lines of dialogue but I think ultimately, the characters were not very funny. I consider this a failure of the film because they were intended to be funny. Tallahassee's whole search for a twinkee really kind of fell flat for me and seemed like such a weak joke. I believe it was supposed to take what seemed like a weak joke and make it one of those funny because it shouldn't be type of jokes. Tallahassee being such a bad ass did on occasion generate a few laughs but part of the problem is that Woody Harrelson is just too hard to take seriously in this film. The twinkee thing didn't help but just in general, because this film does try to employ a certain level of dry humor, not being able to take a character seriously hurts that aspect. To top is all off, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, two actresses whom I've come to like, weren't funny at all. In fact, there weren't really much at all. They were just kind of there most of the time to give Columbus a girl to like and Tallahassee a girl to train in zombie killing.

Overall, Zombieland turned out to be very much as advertised. It was a fun movie that I never found boring, even if I didn't always find it funny or good. On occasion it did try to use the zombie's as a story crutch so it didn't have to delve to into anything too deep which is on some level appropriate when you're just making a fun summer romp but this movie had more potential than that and the proof is in Shaun of the Dead. I'm glad it wasn't an Americanized version of the same movie, but it proved that taking a real story and playing out with a zombie infested backdrop is effective. Trying to make a zombie movie with a secondary story isn't nearly as entertaining.