Zombieland
Studio: Sony Pictures Releasing
Rated: R
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Amber Heard
Director: Ruben Fleischer
WorkNameSort: Zombieland
Our Rating: 2.00

Unencumbered by such petty nuisances as a point, a vision or even an ounce of social commentary, Ruben Fleischer’s transparently hollow zombie flick still succeeds at passing the time, even if a good 15 of its 81 minutes are pure filler. Jesse Eisenberg, forever typecast as a fidgety, sexless egghead, roams a colorful, zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America, with the inexplicably expert ability to slaughter legions of the undead despite harboring a laundry list of inane phobias.

He thinks he’s the only human left uninfected by the zombie-morphing virus, and he’s devised a system of rules straight out of Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide to ensure his solitary existence.

Eventually he meets a lone-wolf curmudgeon played by Woody Harrelson ‘ a short-fused zombie-killer longing for his missing son and a decent Twinkie ‘ and, later, he joins up with Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin as a pair of con-artist sisters headed toward an amusement park in the Pacific Northwest, an area they believe to be safely zombie-free. Enter the requisite limp buddy-movie repartee and even less believable love story in which Eisenberg’s character, the only one drawn with an actual back story and a semblance of depth, matures into a man.

With its multitude of brains splattered by all manner of gun, club, blade and roller-coaster apparatus, Zombieland is like a high-budget Troma film, as problematic as that oxymoron may be. With production values too slick to appease B-movie aficionados and a story too slight to warrant A-film treatment, the movie’s audience is essentially nobody.

You get the impression that Zombieland was made solely for the fun of shooting the 10-minute portion in the middle of the film when the motley crew of survivors crashes the pad of a certain Hollywood star playing, and making fun of, himself. Unlike the rest of the film, this tiny portion is witty, genuine and full of surprises.

This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2009.