Z is for Kooky (and it's good enough for me)

Yesterday afternoon, I went to see the new movie Zombieland. It's a fun little slice of humor meets apocalypse, starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg (of Adventureland), Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin (a bit more grown up since Little Miss Sunshine).

Put simply, this is one of the more fun movies I've seen in a while. It never for a moment takes itself seriously, and strikes a perfect tone for this kind of movie. There's campy, over-the-top gore that makes you laugh. There's affectionate skewering of various conventions of the action and horror genres. And lots of great jokes.

The story is really simple, without anything more than is necessary. The characters don't even have real names -- just the U.S. cities to which they're traveling (or from which they're coming). These four survivors of a viral zombie outbreak are just trying to find a place that's been untouched by the infestation of cannibalistic mutations.

What really makes the movie is the central character played by Jesse Eisenberg, and his great narration of the film. Our hero is an anal, compulsive freak whose elaborate system of rules and hang-ups just happened to make him exactly the sort of person able to survive the end of the world. The movie makes brilliant use of on-screen text (incorporated into the scenery, a la Fringe) to highlight his many rules, and just how they apply to the situation unfolding.

No, I take it back... what really makes the movie is a zany performance by Woody Harrelson. Part Die Hard and maybe part Deliverance, his character is just fun to watch as he delights in killing zombies. (Move over, Aldo Raine, your schtick has been one-upped.)

No, no, I take it back one more time. What really makes the movie is the most hysterical and inspired cameo appearance by an actor in any movie I've seen in the last few years. I don't even want to say who shows up, and in what capacity -- it's just better if you haven't heard and remain in the dark until you see it. But the five to ten minutes of screen time that this performer spends on screen are worth the price of admission all themselves. The rest of the movie being great is just gravy.

But it does start to run out of steam a little bit just near the end. The climax of the movie implies that this finale -- and the movie's title -- were dreamt up first, and the entire plot retro-engineered to arrive at that point. It's an elaborate sequence set in an amusement park that stretches credibility even in the patently unrealistic environment the film has set in place. Rides running by themselves, our survivors doing blatantly stupid things just to create some tension. There's still some euphoric fun at play that keeps disappointment at bay, but the ending nevertheless doesn't quite live up to what's come before.

Yet it's really only a small mark against a movie I found otherwise surprisingly entertaining. I give Zombieland an A-. Hit the theaters, learn "the rules," and prepare yourself for the apocalypse.