Is it true that all a witless zombie needs is the love of a good woman?
Director/writer Jonathan Levine tests this interesting question in a comedy based on the Isaac Marion novel based on the memoirs of Joe Biden’s wife.
It’s a puckish post-modern escape, examining how our feelings are moribund until the right person enters our lives, and then we cease eating human flesh and really rock.
Nicholas Hoult plays R the zombie. Life is a dull routine, shambling around, attacking the living, but nevertheless thinking wry, self-reflective thoughts.
One day he attacks human Julie (Teresa Palmer). Their eyes meet and R is smitten.
What happens next to our star-crossed lovers is the essence of this story.
Julie’s father is human army officer Grigio played by John Malkovich. In an unusual story twist, Grigio breaks the fourth wall at one point, announcing, “I think I’m in the wrong film.” He then walks off screen.
Later Grigio returns to the action as if nothing had happened. Normally, this would be odd. But John Malkovich excels at offbeat performances and we quickly forgive him.
Necrophiliac audiences have not been kind to this movie, calling R’s gradual return to humanity a “sell out.” “They took the safe path,” said Hagar Roy, an activist with CCIU (Citizens for Carnally Inert Unions). “They [filmmakers] could’ve really ripped the shroud off this issue but were too gutless.”
Roy and others in the community felt the film could’ve done a better job of educating audiences by having Julie gradually join R in death and then closing with a sex scene on a stainless steel gurney as credits roll.
“It’s how I would’ve wrapped this stiff,” said Roy. “Pardon my French.”
I can’t say I agree. Let’s not encumber a touching zombie-chick love story with cheap sexual gimmicks whose only purpose is to shock.
On a personal note, I wish they’d made movies like this when Jackie Gleason was still alive. I think The Great One would’ve really rocked in the character of R.
And what about Sarah Silverman as Julie? She could say funny, sassy things then run into a corner and dry hump a dog.
I question Jonathan Gording’s credit for “contact lenses: special.” Isn’t that rather subjective? Did the Contact Lens Board review this singular notification? More questions than answers, I fear.
Some stars. That’s all. Just some. A few.
