Zombieland, or: A Metaphor in Loneliness
Zombieland is the tale of a young man, a middle-aged man, a young woman, and her sister. Oh, and zombies. You might assume that just because there are zombies, it must be all horror, right? Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock (or without a television) for the last month or so, you would know that this movie could very well be deemed the American Shaun of the Dead (in fact, according to the internet, director Ruben Fleischer was inspired to make this film after watching SotD), with its witty voiceovers, insane pop culture references, and humanity.
Jesse Eisenberg plays the unnamed protagonist (called ‘Columbus’ by other characters since that initially had been his ultimate destination), and since I’ve only seen him in Cursed and this, I’m just going to assume all of his films are in the horror genre (Adventureland counts, right?). That’s totally cool. I digress. His character went from phobic to nervous to nervously heroic over the course of the story, and his rules–32 in all–guided him and his fellow survivors as they trekked to California.
Woody Harrelson, my dad’s dude crush since Cheers, plays ‘Tallahassee’, a man with nothing to lose–and one Twinkie to gain–who picks up the hitchhiking Columbus on his way to, you guessed it, Tallahassee. On their way, they run into ‘Wichita’ and ‘Little Rock’ (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, respectively), two sisters whose only motto is ‘trust no one–only themselves’. After two carjackings by the pair, they decide to stick with Columbus and Tallahassee, and change the destination to an amusement park in California, where Wichita and Little Rock had visited when they were younger.
My only qualm with the film was, of course, a rather silly one, and were I not currently employed as a rides operator at an amusement park my irk factor on this movie would be sitting at a big fat goose egg. Even so, the logic that turning on the lights and rides would automatically set the rides into motion did not detract from my enjoyment one bit.
My rating? A+
