Ruben Fleischer’s ‘Zombieland’
BY ROME JORGE LIFESTYLE EDITOR

People are coming back from theaters deadened and dumb-downed—even the ones with the lowest expectations for a teenybopper vampire romance flick. Nothing happens on New Moon. It’s just an excuse to flash werewolf/heartthrob Jacob’s six-pack abs. This sequel makes Twilight look downright thrilling. You know that the vampire fad is dead when mainstream pop culture turns it into bland PG-13 fare such as these. But there is an antidote to these doldrums.

Move over “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob;” here comes “Team Woody.” He’s bald. He’s bad. And he doesn’t care about love. All the man wants is a cream-filled Twinkie bar.

Starring Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Bill Muray, Zombieland is an irreverent comedy set in a post-apocalypse America overrun by flesh eating mindless undead. This movie will keep you laughing well past your natural lifetime.

The humor is a monster mash-up of Juno and Evil Dead, with the same witticism and understated indie storytelling of Diablo Cody’s script and the incessant laugh-a-minute antics of Sam Raimi’s storytelling.

In the movie, a few remaining unconsumed and uninfected humans inadvertently coalesce as they all seek some mythical place free of the scourge. In the face of such dehumanizing devastation, they have become disconnected, distrustful or devious. So as not to be emotionally attached, they refer to one another by their place of origin: Columbus (Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Harrelson), Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin). The exception is Muray who play himself in a cameo.

Columbus—a nerd with irritable bowel syndrome, a fear of clowns and no luck with the ladies—provides narration and anchors the story. A socially inept introvert with no friends even prior to the zombie apocalypse, his lack of emotional attachments has allowed him to keep from being infected even as the rest of the population has been eaten by their own kin. His rules for survival, constantly spelled out in the film, provide much humor.

Columbus bumps into Tallahassee, a gung-ho dude with a Stetson hat and a snakeskin jacket who relishes killing zombies creatively with shotguns, Uzi submachine guns, banjos and pickaxes but nonetheless hides a soul fractured by the death of a loved one. Together, they run into Wichita and Little Rock, siblings who repeatedly trick them out of their guns and cars. They quickly realize they all have a better chance of survival together.

Besides indulging in the fantasy of getting to shoot, smash and run over zombies, audiences, through the films characters, get to raid what’s left of post-consumer America, wantonly taking what they want from convenience stores, prying SUVs off the hands of the dead and thrashing everything else without consequence. They even get to slum out in a Beverly Hills mansion where they run into Bill Muray himself who has outsmarted the zombies by playing one of them.

The film also provides a much-needed break from the vampire fad. While the fanged bloodsuckers are elitist characters, zombies are the monsters for the masses. They epitomize mindless mob rule. And with post-consumer America as its backdrop where gas-guzzling Hummers are getaway cars and calorific Twinkies are the preferred nutrition, the film serves as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on 21st century USA. In his narration, Columbus even notes that the overweight and the obese, today the majority in real life America, were the ones first eaten by the zombies in the film.

So load up on calories by gorging on popcorn and guzzling down those sugary sodas. Add in a Twinkie if you can find one. It’s time to fatten up and let the zombies get to you.