Some Thoughts On ‘Zombieland’: Oh, That Much-Discussed Cameo

“Zombieland,” is a curious picture and it’s nice to see it breaking the conventional wisdom of what is supposed to perform at the box-office. When was the last time a relatively minimum-budget film with “stars” like Woody Harrelson and Jessie Eisenberg (great actors, but not exactly bright-light A-list names) could go number #1 at the box-office and take in $25 million opening to boot? (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin also help make this an odd, B-list cast).

It’s a good little vote of confidence for high-concept films without ballooning budgets (like “District 9”) and surely a good showing for first time director Ruben Fleischer.

“Zombieland,” is a clever and entertaining riff on the soon-to-be-played out (no doubt) zom-com sub-genre perhaps best tackled so far by Edgar Wright in “Shaun Of The Dead.” It subverts the genre with wry humor, adds fun, stylistic RULES for surviving zombieland — big titles that appear on the screen occasionally — but it’s also entirely predictable every step of the way and provides little plot surprises — that’s the zombie genre for you. Regardless, it still proceeds to be fairly enjoyable (and Amber Heard is surprisingly great in her small cameo as a Zombie, she’s genuinely frightening; Mike White also cameos in the picture).

As far as mainstream entertainment goes, this one is definitely diverting and largely satisfying. Yes, that’s about as much of a review as we’re going to muster here, we would probably have graded it a solid little [B]. Also, let’s give props to the musical moment: the opening credits over slo-mo shots of humans being chased after zombies is soundtracked to Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls.” It’s a hilarious, bold opening and really sets the tone. Definitely one of the better movie-music moments of the year (the film also uses tracks by Metric, the Velvet Underground, Willie Nelson, Band Of Horses, Doves, Van Halen, Hank Williams, The Black Keys and The Racounteurs in the credits; curiously enough there is no soundtrack CD).

But here are two issues we had with “Zombieland”:

1) The incessant use of digital blood inserted afterwards in post-production. This is a egregious trend we keep seeing more and more of and it’s blatantly fake. Guillermo del Toro seamlessly pulled it off in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” but we’ve seen 2-3 movies lately where this didn’t work and “Zombieland,” was one of them. Sure, it’s not a dealbreaker, but it does look weird and out of place. This trend needs to stop.

2) That much discussed cameo. SPOILER-NON-SPOILER. Stop reading if you must, but this info has been out there since April and is not exactly a secret.

So, in the film, Eisenberg, Harrelson, Stone and Breslin — the gang of humans who banded together after a rough, backstabbing start — go to L.A. in search of a famous amusement park so Little Rock (the little girl – Breslin), can go to the “safe haven” that is zombie free (its existence is a falsehood propagated by her sister, one must assume to give her some kind of fairytale hope to live for).

On their sojourn towards the Disney-like park they decide to seek rest and shelter in style — in the comfy, presumably vacated mansion of some random Beverly Hills celebrity. Harrelson’s character has a certain comedy icon in mind and they soon find themselves in the palatial estate of Bill Murray. But this self-cognizant, winky scene is really too self-reflexive to work and just feels tonally odd. Not many will complain and if you’re simply seeking laughs — hey, Murray’s game to play out the “Ghostbusters” theme with Ray Parker Jr.’s hit blaring in the background, hahahahah! ironic high fives! — you’ll have fun, but the whole scene seems lazy, improvised and could have actually been much more clever than it thinks it is.

It just feels like the film stops dead in its tracks for this detour and in that respect is too showy and self-consciously aware of itself. Even in a comedy this very telegraphed scene is odd. It basically feels like a deleted sequence in the middle of the movie.

Stopped momentum for celebrity cameo aside — and Harrelson has said in interviews that another celeb had to drop out so he had to put in a last minute call to Bill, which seems to illustrate the random, haphazardness of the scene — once “Zombieland,” getsback on its feet and leaves its suspect diversion behind, the film resumes its comical and entertaining romp into the zombie genre heading straight for its logical theme park conclusion which contains laughs, frights, gore, but not anything you couldn’t foresee a mile away. Still a largely fun theater-going experience to be sure and you could certainly do much worse at a megaplex.