Screenhead

I love that line.  Really I do.  Because in it is the entirety of the movie Zombieland, opening in theaters today.

Zombieland brings us back with Jesse Eisenberg, the Michael Cera knockoff whom you may remember macking on a surprisingly able Kristen Stewart back in another movie about land, Adventureland.  Anyway, this time, naturally we’re in Zombieland, a world vaguely like our own but jammed to the hilt with zombies.  Those few human beings who are left find themselves forced to make deadly choices every day for the sake of survival, but yet, even here, they still manage to have dreams.  Simple dreams, for the most part. Thoroughly American dreams.  But will they capture those dreams?  Or will they be zombie chow?

After I finished watching this one, which I had been longing to see ever since I saw the trailer, one thought hit me like a bolt out of the blue.  This is just the Americanized version of Shaun of the Dead.  Zombieland was another hilarious zombie comedy, the only real difference here being that the thoroughly British qualities of Shaun of the Dead had been replaced by thoroughly American qualities.

Sure, everyone’s got a gun in Zombieland, but they’ll also feel that British influence (after all, Great Britain really IS the mother of America if you want to get metaphorical about it) by striking out with whatever’s handy.  Rakes, hedge clippers,  the Garden Weasel (the weirdest garden tool ever), even pianos on ropes–we’ll take out zombies with whatever we can get our hands on.

Yes, Zombieland is hilarious.  Woody Harrelson is much more talented than anyone gives him credit for (he actually WAS an action hero of sorts at one point), Jesse Eisenberg makes a great foil for Woody’s over-the-top lunacy, and the fact that Bill Murray is in this just made my jaw drop.

But Zombieland will actually make you think, too.  Think about the common dreams we all share.  Oh, sure…in Zombieland, the goals of the day are amusement parks, family and Twinkies, but is that really so far removed from baseball, mom and apple pie?  And in the end, when faced with those horrible choices, and left to, as the movie so dynamically puts it, “nut up or shut up”, you’ll find that more often than not, you’ll be better equipped to nut up than you thought.

There’s so much to like about Zombieland–hilarity, personal growth, violence, zombies, Bill Murray–that the list alone is reason enough to see this.  Zombieland is an incredible movie, and as such, I can’t believe what I’m about to do.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shares my horror and wonders if I’m going soft as I pound its override button like a test-your-strength mallet into a clown’s face and award Zombieland a full-on ten out of ten.  This is just too funny and too action-packed and even too scary not to see.

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