I’ve never heard of Ruben Fleischer. I doubt I know anyone who has, before recently. There’s not even a Wikipedia article about him. But the man is responsible for the best movie-going experience I’ve had in… I actually don’t know how long.
‘Zombieland’ centers on Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin as the last known humans in a world where the zombie apocalypse was brought on two months earlier by a cheeseburger. What remains is a lot of ruin, a swath of the living dead, and four people named after their destinations – respectively, Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock.
Columbus is a nerd with a lot of phobias and a crush on Wichita. Little Rock and Wichita are sister con artists, and they’re surprisingly good at their career of choice. But Tallahassee… he’s driven. He has actual motivation to traverse the world.
Tallahassee is on a quest to find the world’s last Twinkie.
As you may have noticed, this movie does one thing extraordinarily well: it entertains the audience. While the plot is easily predictable, the silliness and the dialogue make every scene in the movie so refreshing that it really is just that good. Most movies lately don’t do much to entertain, which greatly irritates anyone who wants entertainment. I was so pleased with ‘Zombieland,’ I might actually have to buy the DVD, which is a huge thing for me to boast.
I remember a couple months ago, at my friend’s house, when I first watched the trailer for ‘Zombieland’. It showed me hilarious little snippets of the movie, some signs of things to come. It had zombie versions of Charlie Chaplin and John McCain. And the very concept of the movie was so silly that I just couldn’t say no to it. They had me at “world’s last Twinkie.” And for the first time in so very long I didn’t have that voice going through my head saying, “There’s probably a few good parts, most of which were in the trailer, and a lot of mediocre C- material.” I had faith that this movie would be not only as good as it looked, but better, and my faith was rewarded.
There are all of maybe seven or eight characters with names in the movie. It’s a very laid-back, hilarious show with a surprising amount of graphical gore for how funny it is. And I guarantee, every time one of Columbus’ rules to live by flashes on the screen, the entire theatre will be laughing. Pretty much every time Tallahassee opens his mouth, or has a facial expression, you’ll be laughing. Harrelson and Eisenberg are the hilarious duo that enough stupid comedy films have been trying to find for ages.
This is a movie that knows exactly what it is – it knows the zombie movie is a genre that has been overdone before, it knows that any kind of plot twist the movie could take would be pretty predictable, and it knows that it’s not going to be a very serious thing. But there’s a rule brought up in the movie – enjoy the little things. And that’s exactly what the experience is about.
And when Woody Harrelson stops you from making out because he needs help building a pillow fort, you laugh. And you really do enjoy the little things.
‘Zombieland’ is produced by Columbia Pictures, it came out on October 2, and I hope it stays in theatres forever.