When it comes to shaking up the status quo and establishing new ground rules by which to live, there’s nothing more motivating than an apocalypse. And there’s no better apocalypse than a zombie apocalypse, an end-of-the-world scenario that started out as a favorite genre among horror fans and then shambled into the realm of big-budget mainstream movies earlier this decade.
No matter what our foibles and flaws, zombies bring out the best and the worst in the still-living, and a few days stuck in a world populated by gore-caked ghouls hungry for flesh is a self-improvement tool that puts Oprah, Dr. Phil and the rest to shame. Zombies are gross, deadly and grim reminders of our base instincts, but damn it all if they don’t help us become better people (or, for those who fail to heed the zombie’s lesson, become lunch).
Any self-improvement movement must have a guide-book, and that’s partially the function that “Zombieland” fills. When it comes to living with (and dispatching) the undead, there are plenty of rules to abide, and as the “Zombieland” cast demonstrates, ignoring those rules most often leads to serious peril. As the movie opens, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a college student/shut-in, goes over the ground rules: keep yourself in shape, go the extra mile when killing zombies, and always wear your seatbelt. And—this is a big one—don’t get too attached to anyone, since, in Zombieland, they might very well end up trying to snack on you later.
But that’s exactly what happens as Columbus meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a gun-toting good ‘ole boy who’s good at one thing only: killing zombies. Tallahassee’s a whiskey-drinking hard-ass and Columbus is a perpetually-spooked kid with irritable bowel syndrome, but they get along okay. That is, until they meet Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin), a pair of sisters who con Columbus and Tallahassee out of their guns and cars not once, but twice. (In Zombieland, no one uses their real name, part of that whole maintaining-emotional-distance thing.) None of them trust each other, but eventually, they learn to live with one another (thanks to encouragement in the form of ravenous zombies) and set out for an allegedly zombie-free amusement park.
If this sounds suspiciously like 2004′s “Shaun of the Dead,” but with an amusement park instead of The Winchester Pub, you’re right. Director Ruben Fleischer owes just as much to Edgar Wright’s zombie comedy as it does to “Dawn of the Dead” (both the original and the remake) and “28 Days Later.” At this point, the novelty of the zombie comedy has worn off, and it’s not enough to just be a zombie comedy—to survive in this sub-sub-genre, a movie must not only actually be funny, but it’s got to deliver the gory goods as well. “Zombieland” is perfectly passable at both, but it never does anything to rise above its predecessors.
Like a lot of comedies, if you’ve seen the trailer for the film, you’ve seen all the funny parts. Zombies are dispatched with pianos, banjos, hedge clippers, and other assorted objects, and some zombie-related quips score laughs. But the slow-mo zombie attacks get old after a while. So do all those rules, which show up in big, blinking letters on screen whenever someone follows (or ignores) them. It’s one of those meta gags that’s amusing at first but gets laborious as the movie goes on. Driving most of the film’s comedy is Eisenberg and Harrelson; they’ve got a good odd-couple chemistry that works well here, though it would be out of place in any other sort of buddy comedy. Any time Harrelson wears a cowboy hat in a movie, you’re almost guaranteed a good time, and “Zombieland” is no exception.
“Zombieland” treads the line between being a good time and a great time, but it never quite makes the jump. An unexpected mid-movie cameo by Bill Murray helps, but to say too much would spoil the surprise. The comedy and tragedy are well-balanced, but neither element is as subtle or inventive as “Shaun of the Dead.” “Zombieland” is just a bigger, more slickly produced version of the kind of yucks and guts we’ve all seen before. Like most of us, “Zombieland” isn’t bad, but it could be better. Given how all-encompassing the market for zombie merchandise is growing, a self-help guide for frustrated zombie movie makers probably isn’t far off. It will be a necessary read for any return trip to “Zombieland.”
