Joy of the dead

SHAUN DE WAAL: MOVIE OF THE WEEK JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Nov 20 2009 06:00

Now that vampires have become the stuff of teen-chick-flickery, it seems zombies are having a resurgence. They also lend themselves more readily to humour than vampires, it would appear, despite the best efforts of Roman Polanski, George Hamilton and the like, back in the 1970s.

Zombieland rips off the basic idea of the delightful British "romantic comedy with zombies", Shaun of the Dead, which is to say it's a funny zombie movie. We don't, however, have to go through the business of people turning into zombies one by one. As Zombieland starts, it appears that almost everyone on the planet has already mutated, and for all he knows Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is the last non-zombie left.

He will soon stumble upon a few others, though, including someone going as Tallahassee -- a hilarious turn from Woody Harrelson as a trigger-happy redneck who has at last found his role in life. For, yes, this being an American movie, there is a lot of shooting to be done.

Likewise, Zombieland takes the classic American form of the road movie. Our heroes (and heroines) are heading for California, where there may be a zombie-free enclave. So, yahoo and yippee, off we go on a thrilling and amusing trek across the United States, which includes some well-engineered twists and turns and a funny (if over-extended) cameo from Bill Murray.

For pure entertainment that does not simply recycle some old rubbish you've seen a thousand times already, let alone take itself seriously, Zombieland does the trick. It may even be the perfect date movie: it's got laughs, it's got action, it's got gore and plenty of entrail-munching. Yum yum.

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