Near the Peach Tree, There's a Highway

Zombieland (2009)
directed by Ruben Fleischer
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

To whatever degree I might appreciate a genre film that tips its hat to genre films of the past, there’s a cut-off point, after which I feel like I’m being courted instead of entertained. Zombies, unlike serial killers, don’t exist in real life, so rules for surviving a zombie apocalypse are more like trivia night at your local brew pub. It’s probably easy to read one of my reviews for an Eric Rohmer movie and think that I like nothing more than flattering myself, but that isn’t always true, and Zombieland, however innocuous in its ambitions and execution, ain’t my brand of rodeo.

For one thing, I don’t ever want to see Jesse Eisenberg’s Michael Cera impression again, and if I actually watch The Social Network and think for even one minute of Clark and Michael, I’m walking out of the theater. Whoever wrote the part of Tallahassee clearly had Woody Harrelson in mind from the beginning, but Harrelson is a gifted comedian and Tallahassee plays out like a bad caricature. That, and I’m tired of “as himself” cameos (in this case, Bill Murray) prefaced by a big build-up of the guest star’s accomplishments/belovedness/heroic aura. But maybe it was only too many computer effects when none were needed. Maybe there isn’t much left to say in the zombie department. Maybe I need to get back to the old black and white, since it’s raining today anyway.