Snap Review of Zombieland

Posted by Matt Rosenberg on October 5, 2009 at 12:26 am

Nut up or shut up…”Zombieland

” is a hit. With it first hitting theaters this weekend, Zombieland slashed its way to the top spot taking in$25 million. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin form an unlikely fab foursome that wreak havoc for all zombies. They are in the ass kicking business, and business is good.

Woody plays the hilarious smart ass loner that he has perfected. Eisenberg (also in “Adventureland“) is Michael Cera in so many ways but it worked in this movie. It’s also as if they wanted Cera to do it, but settled for Eisenberg instead. He plays a nerdy World of Warcraft all-star who dreams of landing the hot girl. Emma Stone, the hot girl, plays a seductive teen tough-girl with a soft side, and Breslin plays a younger tough-girl looking to rediscover her days as a toddler. We all know Emma Stone from “Superbad” as she was Jonah Hill’s love interest.

Firefox movie Anyways, the four of them understand they better stick together and as a group they succeed. The movie is straight awesome. It knows what it is and doesn’t try to be anymore. There is even a great cameo by Bill Murray who plays himself.

Observe and Report

From a plot perspective, the movie just starts in a zombie world and ends in one. All we know is that a virus turned everyone into a zombie and we are left with a world of zombies still out there. I actually think that made the movie better. The writers realized they didn’t need to worry about going into depth about how they world came to be and how to bring closure to a world of zombies. Instead they just focused on making a hilarious 90 minute horror satire that was full of funny lines, overly bloody zombies, and twinkie obsession. Yes, that’s not a typo. It almost reminded me of “Shaun of the Dead.”

And now that I think about it, this movie is an American version of “Shaun of the Dead.” I think I liked it better actually. There is more laugh out loud humor here and just plain fun. It was also fairly obvious that the actors had a ton of fun making this movie. There just seemed to be a lot of genuine smiles.