United States of Zombieland

Current Tunes: Radiohead - Lucky

I haven’t seen as many movies this year as I have in past ones, so I can’t help but have some reservation about what I’m about to say, but “Zombieland” is probably going to end up being my favorite film of this year. It was an absolute treat; it was like a nice, high-cost but high in flavor and pleasure dessert from a upscale restaurant. Like a rich, decadent red-velvet cake that you sink your teeth into with ravenous delight, doing your own unconscious zombie impression as you chomp mindlessly at your brains-dessert with unbelievable fervor.

I loved the genre-mixing, stroke-of-genius idea of mixing zombie apocalypse with reluctant, awkward misfit road trip. The beauty of that idea comes in how you get a sense of progression and movement along with the characters as they traverse the burned and damaged countryside, scavenging for food and for some sense of solace. Placing the story inside of that narrative, you feel like you’re actually getting somewhere instead of waiting for everyone to die whilst huddled together in the local mall, like in “Dawn of the Dead” for example.

That movie’s genius too, but this is a new breed of zombie film that I think perfectly fits in with the precedent and canon first set out in “Shaun of the Dead.” I could see both that film and “Zombieland” taking place in the same world, at the same time. I’m pretty sure the characters from each movie would have trouble getting along with each other, but with most survival-oriented narratives, of course they would find a way to reconcile. I’d like to see that movie.

“Zombieland” has it’s own uniquely American attitude however. It has a tendency to dwell on a moment or two for too long, but makes up for it by diving back into the major narrative head first without recourse. Cavalier is a good word to describe this movie; it knows what the rules and conventions are, and it follows them as far as its devil-may-care attitude will take it, but winks at you through the whole process.

And how attractive is Emma Stone in this movie? Very. I’d give her hotness a rating of supernova for this performance. Hot, rebellious chick wearing lots of black leather toting a shotgun and kicking just as much ass as Woody Harrelson’s character… it’s perfect. Woody Harrelson is spectacular as well; easily my favorite character in the whole bunch. I was warmed and entranced by how supremely bad ass ‘Tallahassee’ is, while still maintaining (and sometimes emphasizing) serious flaws in the character. The end result isn’t just an arrogant jerk you can learn to like, but you empathize with his plight. But even then, there was one other performance that was even hotter than both Harrelson and Stone combined.

I’m talking about Mr. Bill “I Can Create Life” Murray. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say it might be the greatest cameo role of all time. Let me repeat: all time. I can’t really explain why, because it’d give away the surprise of the whole event. What I’ll say is it gets this illustrious title of greatest all time because it’s so sublime and so perfect, and so incredibly creative, it’s almost like an entirely postmodern deconstruction of the cameo role as a facet of art. It is a cameo, but it isn’t. I know I’m prejudiced, considering he’s been my single most favorite actor since I was even a young child, but he should get some special recognition for his appearance in this movie. I suppose an Oscar is out of the question, which I find annoying because even an honor like that isn’t good enough for how awesome this cameo was.

All in all, a very worthwhile and very surprising movie. I promise you, what you see in the previews is only a small taste of what the movie offers, and even then they are somewhat misleading. I was totally surprised by this movie; I didn’t expect to laugh that much, but I did. I appreciated the risks that the writers and director took, even more when I realize they probably didn’t see them as risks when they started work on this fantastic film. They must have just seen they had a good idea on their hand that only required a subtle, small, quiet cast to connect the audience with the narrative, and they pulled that part off perfectly. A+ filmmaking, a sheer piece of joy.