Friday, 17 February 2012

Rom-Zom-Com

Another entry in the unsurprisingly under-populated zom-rom-com genre, Zombieland. This time the action takes place in a US devastated by mad cow disease, rechristened by the narrator as Zombieland. Essentially it's a comedic - if post-apocalyptic - road-trip that plays the zombie holocaust as a backdrop for four characters doing whatever they like. It doesn't manage to quite sustain the comedy as well as Shawn of the Dead, but its well-played by its leads, particularly Woody Harrelson, and it doesn't outstay its welcome. The one part I really didn't warm to, but which I've seen flagged up as brilliant in reviews, is the cameo of Bill Murray playing himself. It didn't seem even half as funny to me as it's been praised, and just served to tip the comedy too far into silly. But it's a short interlude (and is terminated nicely disrespectfully), so was eminently tolerable.

Grade: B (low +2 on the Leeper Scale)

4 comments:

Graham said...

I'm mildy surprised it took you so long to get round to this one!

Plumbago said...

I had to wait for Carole to be away. She merely tolerated Shaun of the Dead, so there was no way this was going to fly for her!

Graham said...

:) I take it that The Walking Dead doesn't get an airing round your gaffe either then? And on that subject, I've just finished World War Z, which was pretty good too...

Plumbago said...

Nope. Though, actually, I'm not so keen on the zombie genre that I could go through a whole TV series of it. Occasional dips into it are fine, but I prefer my more regular science fiction to horror-themed fiction.