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Zombieland
R1 - America - Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (31st March 2010). |
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The Film
 Some people just aren’t funny, and so they decide to retell jokes to get by as a way of making themselves more interesting. There are those hack comedians like Dennis Leary, Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia that shamelessly will rip off the comedic stylings and jokes of those that are truly funny in order to make themselves more viable. There are still others who aren’t terribly funny, but still manage to get along with repeating jokes they’ve heard before, always forgetting to leave something out or messing up the delivery that it will get a few courtesy laugh. For me “Zombieland” (2009) falls somewhere between the two, trying to retell the genius of comedy that was “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) in a zombie comedy form while also taking elements of internet humor to fuse it into an at-best mundane film. Set in a world that has already been overrun by zombies (which everyone mysteriously knows to refer to as Zombieland, titular), Columbus ( Often compared to “Shaun of the Dead” before release, I’ll admit that I was slightly biased against it for so many trying to invoke the name of the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg gem. Unfortunately all my fears were confirmed as none of the comedy resonated with me in the least. Part of it is the script by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese that lacks any sort of particular wit or charm, covering for it with a public that has a craving for zombie movies and an internet filled with zombie related jokes. Where “Shaun” was a loveletter to zombie movies of past fused with a brilliant sense of original comedy, “Zombieland” manages to become an ode to the recent glut of zombie movies without knowing its history and paying due respect. This becomes a bigger problem when the acting starts to break out in the film, with Eisenberg doing his finest Michael Cera impression, who is also apparently very in right now. Woody Harrelson basically plays a more violent and less hippie version of himself, which isn’t necessarily bad, but his jokes as written just don’t hit for me so it’s all one big miss. Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin are there too, but interestingly their characters also aren’t particularly funny or interesting and it doesn’t bring much more to the film. But above all the most abominable acting performance in the film is the (spoiler) cameo appearance of Bill Murray which comes across as so half-assed, mundane and downright unfunny that it ruined my general mood. But of course as a lover of special effects and gore, I have to admit there was some decent work done in the film. However, the lack of creative kills and effects work (not even a true Tom Savini/George A. Romero style pull-apart) represents a larger mentality of the film, rather than letting originality infiltrate the movie, it’s a rehashing of the originality of others. Retold like a game of telephone, passed down a few times and reconstructed, it distorts what has originally been done while adding very little interesting of it’s own along with it. For me what the film really comes down to is the blasphemy of invoking the name of the more interesting, more hilarious and superior “Shaun of the Dead” that came with all of the promotional materials that preceded the film. It can’t hold a candle to what “Shaun” accomplishes and the comparisons just serve to magnify everything that’s a problem with the film. While touting a ‘zombie kill of the week’ throughout the film, the kills don’t approach a level of creativity expected from zombie movies and the humor doesn’t touch great comedy. When something this plain is shined to be gold, all I get is whiffs of a stink that just continues to rot with each heaping of praise for the film that is just following a trend.
Video
Visually the movie isn’t bad on DVD, in the 2.40:1 anamorphic aspect ratio, the clarity is not bad except for some scenes where the lighting looks inconsistent, over or under done and the colors get lost a little bit. The film could use a better contrast transfer, especially the scene in Bill Murray’s house where the natural lighting mostly turns to mush with all the dark hair and clothing blending into the backgrounds without selling any sort of crispness. Otherwise the transfer does fairly well, but this contrast issue interferes a bit with the colors and gets a little visually distracting.
Audio
With the English Dolby Digital 5.1 track the sound moves a bit better, all the levels for sound effects, incidental music, soundtrack and the dialogue are well balanced and move properly through the system. Lacking any real dips in the way the effects come through technically, the biggest problem comes with the sound effects that don’t quite work for me. Between the quirky dinging sound effects paired with floating text and the zombie hunger and eating noises, I’m really under whelmed by the actual sound work of the film. There are also 5.1 tracks in French and English Descriptive for the visually impaired. The disc also features subtitles in English, English for the hearing impaired and French.
Extras
The single disc comes with an audio commentary, three featurettes, deleted scenes, visual effects progressions, theatrical trailers and bonus trailers. First comes the audio commentary with actors Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg, director Ruben Fleisher, screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The commentary isn’t very lively or informative from the outset at Fleisher’s voice is fairly monotone, Harrelson sounds high/sleepy the entire time and Eisenberg has a similar monotone to the film. There are some tidbits of information that are revealing about the film, like it’s original inception as a TV show, unsuccessfully pitched to CBS, or audition processes that lead up to the film and the improvisation of scenes. What really comes through though is that Fleisher doesn’t particularly enjoy Zombie movies or the genre, showing more popular trendwatching than respect, and that Eisenberg doesn’t really enjoy the movie. He talks of how certain scenes are funny but expresses concerns about the Murray cameo, the blocking of certain scenes and good portions of his acting that he halfheartedly brushes over with comments of, ‘well, it looks better now’ or ‘I think it worked out.’ The first featurette is “In Search of Zombieland” which urns for 15 minutes and 58 seconds, working as the main making-of for the film. Filled with clips, talking head interviews and behind-the-scenes looks the film tracks it’s progress from TV pilot into feature film. There’s a joke interview with a zombie thrown in, along with all the actors praising the script and the creative team praising the actors. It has the feel of an extended and comprehensive press junket moreso than making of, but since I wasn’t interested in the movie my distain has probably seeped over to keep my interest out of the featurette. “Zombieland is Your Land” runs for 11 minutes and 59 seconds and this featurette is more about the production aspect of the film. There’s a discussion of the world that they created for production with car crashes and empty spaces, and fairly lengthy talking time given to production designer Maher Ahmed, which is nice considering I feel like the behind the scenes workers don’t often get as much credit as they deserve. Next is a fairly small load of deleted scenes, seven in all, playable together for or separately: - “Ziploc Bags” runs for 21 seconds, rule number 2 is ziploc bags. - “This Did Not Just Happen” runs for 34 seconds, Columbus tries to convince himself that this did not just happen. - “Mom and Dad Would Have to Wait” runs for 56 seconds, Columbus wraps up his neighbor. - “The Joke’s on Them” runs for 41 seconds, Columbus and Tallahassee get abandoned by Wichita and Little Rock on the open road. - “The Slow and the Weak” runs for 1 minute and 42 seconds, the two girls guess about the former lives of the two guys and decided to go back for the two guys. - “Girls Play at Park” runs for 34 seconds, more shots of the girls playing around at the amusement park before zombies get there. - “You Always Think of Something” runs for 44 seconds, while they’re stuck at the top of the ride the two girls try and comfort each other Next are the visual effects progression scenes,” four in all, that depict the different major effect sequences of the film from green screen to animatic and final shot, but with no sound. They are: - “Washington” runs for 1 minute and 1 second, showing the opening scene in D.C. - “Seat Belts” runs for 34 seconds, showing the scene of the woman ejecting from her car. - “Banjo Zombie” runs for 31 seconds, showing how they painted up and enhanced the grocery store kills. - “Falling Zombie” runs for 24 seconds, showing the falling zombie at the amusement park. The theatrical promo trailers just show the promotional materials for the film, five in all, of Harrelson and Eisenberg, in character, answering questions about zombies: - “Bounty Towels” runs for 1 minute and 12 seconds. - “Bowling Ball” runs for 1 minute and 13 seconds. - “Buddy System” runs for 1 minute and 50 seconds. - “Skillet” runs for 1 minute and 8 seconds. - “Swiss Army” runs for 1 minute and 10 seconds. “Woke Up Dead Episode ‘Up and At ‘Em’” featurette runs for 4 minutes and 18 seconds, showing the world of Jon Heder as a man who died in a bathtub and woke up as a zombie. Heder is up to his usually unfunny self and this semblance of comedic styling isn’t even worth the button press it takes to get to the feature. I was ready to give the DVD a 'D' on special features but this terrible waste of filmmaking is so terrible it drags everything along with it. Bonus trailers are for: - “Blu-ray disc is high definition!” runs for 2 minutes and 14 seconds. - “Defendor” runs for 2 minutes and 4 seconds. - “The Stepfather” runs for 33 seconds. - “Grown Ups” runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds. - “2012” runs for 33 seconds. - “Michael Jackson’s This is It” runs for 2 minutes and 32 seconds. - “Transylmania” runs for 2 minutes and 33 seconds. - “Takers” runs for 2 minutes and 23 seconds. - “Salt” runs for 1 minute and 57 seconds. - “The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day” runs for 18 seconds. - “Universal Soldier: Regeneration” runs for 1 minute and 26 seconds. - “Ghostbusters” runs for 1 minute and 24 seconds. - “Night of the Creeps” runs for 1 minute and 32 seconds. - “Breaking Bad – Season 2” runs for 33 seconds. - “The Damned United” runs for 2 minutes and 7 seconds.
Overall
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