** out of ****
Directed by: Ruben Fleischer
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin
Running Time: 85 minutes
Sitting through Zombieland is like sitting on an unsteady amusement park ride. Some of it’s fun, some of it’s thrilling, but most of it just hurts your head as it goes through the rather predictable motions.
Ruben Fleischer’s directorial debut is a takeoff on the revived zombie subgenre. But while it has a lot of guts (and gore, be warned), the film is too glorified with itself to be taken seriously and too lazy in its storytelling to keep us on our toes.
The film opens with a college student (Jesse Eisenberg) remarking that a hamburger infected with mad cow disease has started a worldwide zombie epidemic. Alive and kicking zombie butt, he is off to Columbus, Ohio to confirm that his parents have survived the vicious plague.
Equipped with a packet of “rules” for surviving the creature attacks (which become a recurring motif), he meets an ultra-violent cowboy (Woody Harrelson) whose last will is to consume the final Twinkie desserts left over in Middle America. Yes, you read that correctly.
Using the names of the places they are heading toward, Columbus (the teen) and Tallahassee (the cowboy) set off to reach their respective destinations.
During a visit to a grocery store, which involves slaying zombies and searching for two-bite sponge cakes, the men encounter con girls Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). The foursome then set out to Pacific Playlands, an amusement park that is reportedly zombie-free.
Along the way, Columbus crushes on Wichita, Tallahassee continues his obsessive craving with Twinkies, and Little Rock proves that while she may know plenty about Hannah Montana, she’s rather uneducated about the iconic films of a certain movie star (whose mansion the group settles in, but we’ll get to that part later on).
Zombieland is a film that hopes its wisecracks and amusements will distract the audience from realizing that the plot has a complexity that makes paper look thick.
The film is smarmy and self-indulgent. Fleischer overdoes the bloodspray, and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick rely on voiceover too often to voice Columbus’s frantic need to escape the bloodthirsty creatures, not to mention his plentiful sexual insecurities.
Furthermore, too many of the situations feel contrived; Tallahassee and Columbus just happen to walk by an unlocked Hummer with a backseat full of guns. Lots and lots of guns.
The motivation to get to Pacific Playlands also feels false. It may be zombie-free, but what’s going to happen when they open the gates, allowing entry into the amusement park?
The script is as lazy in its storytelling as the zombies are in their movement.
Still, Harrelson is great fun: his Tallahassee is sardonic and brawny, but never over-the-top. He even has a few tender moments to flesh out his character before he guts the flesh out of the miserable zombies.
A minor stop at a major celebrity’s house (which we mentioned earlier) is certainly funny. But while the cameo may be inspired, it brings the film to a grinding halt, substituting plot progression for a dose of nostalgia. Of the 85 minute running time, far too much time is spent on this unnecessary section, basically done for the sake of churning out laughs and not much else.
When all is said and done, Zombieland consists of a man’s pandemonic bingeing for Twinkies and a clunky teenage romance. So much for America’s answer to the dead-on (and superior) horror parody Shaun of the Dead.
It may feature a killer performance from Woody Harrelson and a great cameo, but it lacks the creativity, energy and wit that would catapult it into the realm of classic genre parodies.
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