The Freak's Rating: B+ : Originality in horror is something tricky to pull off. Stepping away from tried and true hero and villain storylines is something few attempt to do since very few have succeeded in doing so. George Romero is known as the father of zombie films, bringing such classics as Day of the Dead and the original Dawn of the Dead to the big screen. Romero would have had a chuckle watching Zombieland.
Sporting a rock-heavy soundtrack, Zombieland screams comedy from the opening bell, sporting a few laugh out loud moments even in the credits. The audience is introduced via narration by Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) to the reason the world is the way it is (overrun by zombies). Columbus' popup "rules" for surviving zombies is nicely orchestrated as well. It would have been nice to have a different twist on the way the zombies came to be ala I Am Legend's cancer vaccinations, but it is forgiven for the original comedic tint to the way we see this world.
Though Jesse Eisenberg's delivery is amusing, he is an exact duplicate of Micheal Cera in some ways. Both have great timing, but both appear to be one trick ponies, delivering dry humor in a "I'm the everyday guy" way. They are both stereotyped as shy guys with great wit, even if it is uttered under the breath for the most part. This style of delivery refreshing in Eisenberg's first film, Adventureland, but is a tad stale here. Woody Harrelson is the film's true savior as Tallahassee. He is flat out hilarious with nearly every line delivered. Superbad's Emma Stone is nicely cast as the love interest and Abigail Breslin has a funny turn as her little sister. There is a surprise cameo in Zombieland that steals the 5 minutes of screen time they are in and turn them into the funniest 5 minutes of the film without question.
Writing is decent here, but has a few enormous plot holes that are inexplicable. That said, there are a few moments of sheer brilliance by the writers, coming up with dialogue that is sharp and hysterical. Having seen what is possible for them to generate, I must fault the writing in parts, knowing they could have done better.
Overall Zombieland is entertaining. If not for a few plot holes, the retread of Eisenberg's performance from Adventureland and lack of quality writing at points, the film gets an A. The film is most likely a C without the 5 minute cameo, which elevates it dramatically.
Nate's Rating: B- : I haven't read Scott's review yet, but you should know that I'm trying to follow the site's rating rules more closely. So, no matter how much I liked a movie, if I can't think of more than a few people to recommend it to, I won't give it anything more than a C+. So, Watchmen probably falls into this category -- I absolutely loved it, but I'm pretty sure most other people won't be able to get into it, so it should have been a C or C+.
Zombieland starts out as a great film and degrades slowly but steadily to the realm of the mediocre. The Rules the main protagonist has, and how they are presented, are great in the first 30 minutes or so, but they do get a little tired towards the end. Woody Harrelson isn't totally convincing, but his comedic timing and dialog are done well enough to give you a pretty good laugh.
The protagonists in general are likable and amusing; you want them to survive most of the time.
Actually I guess things don't start to fall apart until the last half-hour or so, when some key characters do some really stupid things and events become predictable.
Bill Murray's cameo teeters precariously on the line between "great" and "disastrous"; one moment on one side, and the next on the other. Overall I guess the "great" tallies slightly outnumber the "disastrous" ones. Special note about the stupid thing Bill Murray does -- normally, stupidity like that really takes me out of the film, but in this one case it was done with such blatant enthusiasm that I counted it in the "great" category.
Under my old scale I think it would have gotten an A- because I really enjoyed most of it. But since I'm not sure how many people I can recommend it to, I'll have to scale that back to a B-. I'll recommend it to several like-minded individuals, but probably not most of the people I know.
