Zomedy-lite

I suppose Zombieland is OK for a TV pilot that somehow made it to the big screen. Unfortunately, the flick never outgrows its TV birth and grows into a real movie. Not really a zomedy, it’s more a road movie with zombie sprinkles.

Set a couple of months after the inevitable zombie apocalypse, the onscreen happenings are pieced together via the interminable voiceover of a chuckleheaded teen (some Michael Cera knock-off). Our chatterbox is soon joined by Woody Harrelson (played by Woody Harrelson) and a mercenary pair of sisters (some raccoon-eyed brunette and that kid from Little Miss Sunshine). For some reason, they get it into their tiny little minds that an amusement park 3,000 miles away is clear of the undead, and off they go. Along the way they talk, shop and argue. Sometimes, a zombie shambles into the picture and they kill it by way of a set of rules lifted (unattributed) from Max Brooks’ 2003 satirical zombie manual, The Zombie Survival Guide.

It’s never made clear how these rocket scientists manage to last as long as they do in a zombie apocalypse, what with leaving doors and gates open and lighting up big neon signs that flash “Eat Here!” for miles around the amusement park.

If Zombieland was a li’l more cartoonish, it might have been something interesting. Unfortunately, most of the creative zombie kills promised in the trailer were featured in the trailer, with the rest of the running time padded out with tone-deaf jibber jabber. The weakest link is trying too hard to be a zombie movie for folks who don’t like zombie movies, with too much of the sitcom warm-’n’-fuzzy hung around its neck. As such, it’s not clever and it’s not suspenseful; one never gets the vibe that any of the leads might not make it to the end credits.