Zombieland

On Saturday, I saw Zombieland with the in-laws. In the movie, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is making his way from Texas to Ohio to find his family. His progress is severly impeded due to the fact that nearly everyone in America has turned into a human-eating zombie. Columbus has managed to survive because he follows simple rules such as "Always check the back seat," and "Do cardio" (so you can outrun zombies).

Columbus meets Tallahasee (Woody Harrelson), and they team up. Tallahassee loves to kill zombies in inventive ways. With car doors. Banjos. Hedge Trimmers. You name it. Tallahassee and Columbus meet Witichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) while searching a grocery store for twinkies. After some initial skirmishes, the four of them decide to head to Pacific Playland, a fictional amusement park in California, where rumor has it, there are no zombies.

On paper, the movie should have the perfect movie for me: comed;, stylized, gratuitous violence; and cameo by Bill Murray. But frankly, I was disappointed. It was good, but I had heard that the movie had the biggest laugh of the whole year. "The biggest laugh!" I thought. "The whole year." "How exciting!" "Even bigger than the Hangover?" "Maybe Abigail Breslin will dance with Bill Murray to Superfreak!" But alas, there was no Superfreak. The big moment turned out to be something that my sister had already told me about. So I probably ruined it for myself by knowing too much about the movie beforehand.

But that is not the only reason I was disappointed. I found the ending unsatisfying. The group of misfits had found a family in this zombie land: each other. Aww how cute. But hadn't they all been friends for the majority of the movie? Was there ever any doubt?

I also found the line "It's time to nut up or shut up!" distracting. This line was the catch phrase of Tallahassee and repeated throughout the movie. But every time we heard the line, the flow of the movie was interuppted so that Woody Harrelson could deliver another sound bite for commercials and trailers. Two years ago one of my friends tried to make the phrase "nut up" common parlance. He even made a fake wikipedia article about the origins of the phrase. It never caught on in the group, and I doubt it will catch on after Zombieland. Overall, the movie was worth seeing, but not purchase-worthy.