Hey folks, Harry here with a look at ZOMBIELAND from a fella I'll refer to as the Blue Meanie. Seems this is exactly the film I'm hoping it is - based upon seeing the trailers and clips. But I'll find out soon enough when Fantastic Fest unveils the film publicly at the grand Paramount Theatre in Two weeks with special guests galore. So - want to know if it is worth coming to that screening, read, but read lightly - there are spoilers to be had.
Short version: It's no Shaun of the Dead (but a good time is had!) Longer, more gooder writtin version: A semi-finished cut as far as I can tell was screened for us (noticed a little bit of temp score used). If you've seen the trailer with the slo-mo bits, you've seen the majority of the opening credits. The bulk of the story follows "Columbus", Jesse Eisenberg, who is trying to go from UT in Austin back to his home town of Columbus, Ohio. In this zombie ridden world, it looks like Columbus' phobias have given him the edge, as he's managed to avoid people, restrooms unless absolutely necessary, and clowns (yes, this will be a plot point). We get to see examples of his survival tip list, highlighting the benefits of cardio, double taps (when in doubt, shoot them again), and seatbelts. In a loopy way, the beginning makes us believe think that we're going to watch The Hitchhiker's Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse, with the text of each rule popping up when it should be followed. but the plot manages to nudge Columbus into meeting "Tallahassee", Woody Fucking Harrelson turned up to 11, who is on his way to his namesake's city in Florida (do you see a name pattern emerging?). A goofy, pointlessly tense standoff later, the two decide they'll work together on their roadtrip, at least as far as TexArkana. It's established pretty fast that this zombie outbreak has soundly kicked the world's ass. The duo bicker while driving or walking through carnage strewn highways, small towns where signs of resistance were made, but nothing seems to phase either of them. All the normal tropes of a zombie film get sidestepped for the most part, as the most pressing mission aside from survival is Tallahassee's near-psychotic quest for a single, still-fresh Twinkie. I think that's what makes this film work well, we're eased into it with the MST3K equivalent of "repeat to yourself, 'It's just a show, I should really just relax'". We're not pounded with the grimdark realities that other zombie films have covered. For Columbus, his main worry is pissing off Tallahassee and stressing that he'll never be with a girl long enough to brush her hair over their ear. Even the vague talk of hearing about a safe place without zombies is waved off, as no one really buys into such a place existing (maybe that's why they've survived for so long). If I had any gripes for the film, it's that the threat of the zombies is next to nil. For all the havoc they caused around the world, we're never worried for the characters. The hoard exists mainly to be fragged in sometimes humorous and always messy ways. Also, the theme park, featured in the trailer, makes one wonder what characters were thinking. For a group of people who have survived this long, they are shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, to discover that turning on the power to a theme park (lights and all) will catch the zombies' decaying eyes. The ending also got a little bit of a groan as Columbus voice-overs something so lame that would have been hammy on Full House. That said, the heavy lifting done by Eisenberg and Harrelson make what could have been a very slight tale into something better. There's not a lot of depth to their characters, but when we do stumble across a block of character background, it makes you sympathize the hell out of these poor bastards. Harrelson in particular has a flashback montage that gets turned on its ear later on in the film (god, the small detail of a cat-shaped pancake KILLS). It's not a lot for him to work with, but he sells it hard enough that it is all you need to know about his character, which could easily have been written off as a cross between the broadness of Yosemite Sam and a slightly mellower killing machine that was Mickey Knox. Eisenberg takes something as simple as riding shotgun in a car without a seatbelt as a positive step forward socially. You almost hope they could team up again for something akin to Bing and Hope's "Road to" (maybe an Alien Invasion next time?). Anyone who has seen the trailer would know that it isn't just these two guys, but I'm going to have to be vague about Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. Part of the fun of their roles is how they hook up and complicate our boys' lives. Emma's just right in tone, someone who knows how to use her looks and an overprotective sister. Abigail (wooow, she's like 13 and already has an IMDB listing like a veteran) has a good volatile chemistry with the boys, especially Harrelson. In a brief bit, Harrelson tries to explain Willie Nelson to her and she explains Hanna Montana to him. Neither one makes a good case. Oh, and then there is *Celebrity Cameo*. It's not so much a mystery if you go to IMDB, but one of the finer points of the film is how it is built up, revealed, and followed through on. The film manages to exploit the fact that the celebrity has a history with Columbia, leading to some great shout-outs to earlier films. The celebrity plays it like a champ, earning his place at the "tippy top of showbiz" as one character puts it. So yeah, a good time to be had if you have a hankering for seeing zombies get slagged by solid actors with a decent gore budget.
