ZOMBIELAND:
DOUBLE TAP 2019, R, 93 mins. Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee / Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus / Emma Stone as Wichita (Krista) / Abigail Breslin as Little Rock / Rosario Dawson as Nevada / Zoey Deutch as Madison / Avan Jogia as Berkeley Directed by Ruben Fleischer / Written by Rhett Reese, Dave Callaham, and Paul Wernick |
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I think it's easy
to forget what a relative breath of fresh air 2009's ZOMBIELAND
was, which found a way of balancing gore and undead mayhem with a satiric
sensibility that helped segregate it well apart from other offerings.
Cleverly amalgamating self-aware laughs, splatterhouse action
sequences, and a very game cast that all seemed in on the subversive joke,
ZOMBIELAND - like a SHAUN OF THE DEAD
before it - was as infectiously goofy and well oiled of a horror comedy as
one could expect. Herein lies the
problem, though, when it comes to comedy sequels (especially ones being
released so well long after the opening of their predecessors): They
rarely, if ever, match the high laugh quotient of what came before, and
mostly fail at adding unique elements in to make it feel compellingly and
hilariously different. This
brings us to ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP, which has somewhat dubiously come out
a full decade after its joyously entertaining prequel, which leaves it, in
turn, in an extra thorny predicament: will fans of the first still care
and want to - pardon the pun - consume a new franchise installment
so late in the game?. On
a positive, this sequel rather smartly assembles the first film's
director in Rueben Fleischer and the entire quartet of stars that appeared
beforehand in Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail
Breslin. I'm happy to report
that ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP is a better sequel to the cult classic than it
probably has any business of being, and one that scores many big laughs
when needed on top of added some much needed new characters into the mix
to mingle with the returning cast. A lot can happen
in ten years, especially in the post-apocalyptic walking dead covered
wasteland that is the U.S. in this series.
Harrelson returns as everyone's favorite red necked wanna-see-how-hard-I-can-punch
zombie hunter Tallahassee, who has grown accustomed to living with his
new surrogate family in Jesse Eisenberg's dweeby/rule abiding Columbus,
his girlfriend in Emma Stone's Wichita, and her little (well, not quite
so little anymore) sister in Abigail Breslin's Little Rock
(established in the first film's mythology, they have all never exchanged
their real names and instead are referred to by their respective birth cities). It's pretty amazing, in retrospect, what this cast has
accomplished in their post ZOMBIELAND 1 film work, with Harrelson netting
an Oscar nomination for THREE
BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI and Eisenberg also garnering
one for this work on THE SOCIAL
NETWORK. Stone even
won one for her stupendous work on LA LA LAND,
and Breslin has, well, physically grown up the most and into young
adulthood. With a cast this
busy during the last several years - and with them all becoming more in
demand as A-listers - then maybe it's no wonder why this sequel took so
long to re-assemble them all.
Anyhoo', this
clan - in the opening stages of this follow-up entry - has found a new
home in the well abandoned White House (yes, that one), and things
seem to be moving along swimmingly for all, so much so that the hopeless
romantic in Columbus decides that it's time to propose to Wichita...in the
Lincoln bedroom no less (one thing this sequel never explains is why he
never popped the question years earlier, seeing as they've been an
exclusive item for a decade). Well,
Wichita gets defensively cold feet very quickly and decides to abruptly
leave the heartbroken Columbus and Tallahassee...potentially for
good...with her sister in tow. This
leaves the two men to journey back on the road together alone, that is
until they befriend a blonde ditz named Madison (Zoey Deutch), who's been
living alone for years in a mall's frozen yogurt store.
The intellectually challenged, but shockingly bubbly (considering
the apocalypse) girl takes an instant liking to Columbus, which makes
matters really awkward when Wichita returns to them, but with the bad news
that Little Rock has gone on the run with a free loving Berkeley hipster
(Avan Jogia), whose make love, not war stance places Little Rock in
danger, leaving Tallahassee and company frantically going on the offensive
to locate her. To be fair,
Fleischer has had a decidedly so-so career over the last ten years,
helming films of hit or miss quality in GANGSTER
SQUAD (also starring Stone), 13
MINUTES OR LESS (also starring Eisenberg), and, most recently, VENOM.
He thankfully goes back to the stylistic well of what made
ZOMBIELAND so visually appealing and viscerally offbeat, which can be
immediately felt in DOUBLE TAP's opening few seconds, especially when the
Columbia Pictures logo comes to life to smash some invading zombies on the
cranium (nice touch). This is
followed by a splendidly nifty looking opening credit montage featuring
the four heroes battle their way to the White House through one zombie
after another, with Tallahassee showing the most sadistic pleasure with
each new ghastly kill (Metallica also blasts in the background to help
accentuate the slow mo carnage). It
would be easy to criticize Fleischer for just regurgitating a similar
aesthetically charged montage that opened the first one, but it's such an
unmitigated hoot to be re-introduced to these characters again - all of
which have become that much more battle harded and lethal - that
nitpicking gets thrown to the wayside. Returning writers
Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (who in the interim time penned DEADPOOL
1 and 2) also manage to spice
things up a bit in terms of embellishing the already established zombie
lore, especially when it comes to showcasing how these undead monsters
have evolved. Some brain
eaters, called "The Hawking" (named after you-know-who), have
become super smart, whereas others like the T-800s are unstoppably hungry
to get their hands on human flesh (they are also very hard to kill).
Not all zombies have changed for the better, like the amusingly
named "Homers" (in short, extremely dumb zombies).
They also manage to introduce some new players as well, most
notably Deutch's Madison, who's clueless in manners almost
incomprehensible consider the madness that surrounds her.
With her pink sweats and tank top and perpetual Valley Girl
proclamations (she's also a vegan), Madison initially comes off as a
fairly grating caricature, but Deutch is so undeniably charming and warm
that her character miraculously grows more adorably tolerable as the film
progresses. Also thrown in is
Rosario Dawson's Nevada, who runs an Elvis worshiping shrine of a hotel
just outside of Graceland that really appeals to the King loving
Tallahassee. Perhaps one of
the funniest - and most meta - new characters come in the form of a group
meet-cute, of sorts, between Tallahassee and Columbus with Luke Wilson's
Albuquerque and Thomas Middleditch's Flagstaff, the latter two being
hilariously identical doppelgangers to them in multiple ways (Flagstaff
even has commandments to surviving the apocalypse, muck akin to Columbus
already time-honored rules). Not all of the
characters are well drawn, like the very under-developed new hippie love
interest to Little Rock that wants to take her to a weapons-free, but
peace loving commune well guarded from zombie hordes (he's good for a
couple of laughs, but beyond that he's essentially a plot device used to
move the story forward for an ultimate reunion between all of the main
heroes). This, of course,
builds towards ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP's finale, which bares an uncanny
resemblance to the first film's third act, albeit this time everyone's
relatively safe and secure within a giant monster truck, which leads to
some massive zombie decimation with ease (perhaps one of the problems with
this film and the last one is that you never really feel that these
characters are ever in any real danger of being gobbled up by the decaying
hordes around them). I will
give ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP props for still being able to come up with novel new ways of killing zombies, especially after
all perceivable possibilities have been explored in movies and on TV. For example, this is
arguably the only film in history that demonstrates how Italy's Leaning Tower
of Pisa can be used to murder zombies (don't ask).
When I stop and think about it, there's really not that much substantial scripting at play here in ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP, and even with new locations and characters thrown into the mixing bowl, not many other new ingredients make it in. If anything, the sequel is yet another road trip effort through zombie plagued America with a few well realized detours, and not much else. Parts of me don't think ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP is worthy of a cinema visit, and it certainly isn't as free wheeling and devilishly sly as its antecedent; it's more of a retread than a true sequel that dares to take these beloved characters in a new directions. But, yeah, it's such a simple pleasure to spend time with them again that it helps cement the film as enjoyably low calorie comfort food that goes down well and is worth a watch on the big screen...and generally worth the egregiously long wait. Seeing this highly dysfunctional clan get over their respective differences again to nut up and shut up and keep themselves alive from the monsters that lurk around them at every turn...is still pretty giddily entertaining. And one last thing: ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP contains the greatest mid-end credits scene...like...ever. You'll know that I mean when you see it. |
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