Entertainment, Movies - Marine Corps Times

Zombie flick is a wild ride

When you find yourself one of the apparently last few human survivors of a ravenous global zombie plague, it can’t hurt to develop a game plan to help you stay un-undead. For example:

• Check the back seat whenever you get in a car. A zombie might have crawled in while you weren’t looking.

• Always wear a seat belt so that if a zombie has crawled into your car, you can slam on the brakes and send him/her flying through the windshield.

• One word: Cardio — for when you find yourself on foot and you have to outrun the suckers.

• Most importantly: Never assume your first head shot has put a zombie down for the count; always double-tap the noggin.

Such are the rules laid down in “Zombieland,” an engaging and polished entry in the admittedly sparse zom-com microgenre. Think “Shaun of the Dead” with distinctly American sensibilities: ruder, louder, faster and much more in-your-face.

Here’s a hint of what’s in store: The opening-credit sequence features the aural crunch of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” while highly stylized, almost 3-D renderings of slow-motion zombie attacks splay across the screen.

If that’s not enough, the film offers a double-barreled blast of Woody Harrelson in the role he may have been born to play: A drawlin’ good-ol’-boy who rolls in a custom up-armored Cadillac Escalade and positively revels in his self-appointed mission to thin the undead herd.

The aforementioned rules actually were crafted by Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a young stranger in a very strange land who has been flying solo since the plague hit.

Columbus (main characters are known only by their hometowns) is a geeky, good-hearted, soft-spoken, socially maladjusted bundle of tics and phobias laced with untimely bouts of irritable bowel syndrome.

By chance, he runs into Tallahassee (Harrelson), who couldn’t be a more polar opposite: A yahoo butt-whipper roaming the land in his Caddie with two missions — to knock off zombies (battle cry: “Time to nut up or shut up!”), and to find just one last Hostess Twinkie that hasn’t blown by its expiration date.

Couples don’t come any odder than this, but the two agree to throw in together, at least for a while. Their situation gets a lot more complicated when they run into Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), two cute young grifters who pull a well-oiled damsels-in-distress routine to relieve the boys of their ride and their weaponry — not once, but twice.

The four eventually join forces (with Columbus quickly developing a heavy crush on Wichita) and head west on an improbably freaky road trip, riding the wings of a dubious rumor that a certain location in Los Angeles has somehow remained a zombie-free zone.

What they find in Los Angeles is alarming — is there anything scarier than a clown zombie? — and uproarious, in the form of the greatest cameo of the year, if not the decade, by a beloved film and TV icon (“the tippy-top of the A-list,” as Tallahassee puts it) whose identity cannot even be hinted at, lest the fun be spoiled.

Nothing in the comparatively thin resumes of writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (their apropos claim to fame: Something called “The Joe Schmo Show”) and director Ruben Fleischer would make you think they could craft something so polished.

Yes, it’s a zombie flick; the easily offended need not apply. And truth be told, it does have a few soft spots. But beneath the gore, guts, one-liners and sight gags, its appealing tale of deep friendship amid surreal hardship makes “Zombieland” a cool cocktail for our tough times.

Rated R for violence, gore, language. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@atpco.com.