Year 12, Day 294 - 10/20/20 - Movie #3,679
BEFORE: Well, I was going to post this on Monday, but I've held off for Tuesday, which is my birthday. The reason? I looked back at my post for the first "Zombieland" and realized I also reviewed that film on my birthday, exactly five years ago. Look at the numbering - the two films' numbers are just one off from being 1,500 away from each other - that's five years at 300 films a year, or very close to it, though I did not plan this, it just happened by accident. Anyway, I'm turning 52 today, with best wishes also going out to my birthday twins - Bill Nunn, Danny Boyle, Viggo Mortensen, Snoop Dogg, future vice president Kamala Harris, Dan Fogler, John Krasinski, and thoughts for the late Jerry Orbach, Tom Petty, Art Buchwald, Mickey Mantle, Bela Lugosi and Dr. Joyce Brothers.
Birthdays are different during the COVID pandemic, and one would assume, different during a zombie apocalypse too. (There's still time for zombies to surface in 2020, as we've had just about every other terrible situation happen this year...) My wife's birthday was one week ago, and we spent most of the day at home, except for a trip out to her favorite steakhouse, which had just re-opened for indoor dining two weeks before. I had a cake designed to look like a steak delivered to our house, so that was dessert, but then everyone working at the steakhouse wanted to see a photo of the cake that looked like a steak!
Today's film is what would have followed those three horror films I deleted from Plan C, so originally Zoey Deutch would have carried over from "Beautiful Creatures". But I went with Plan D, so Thomas Middleditch carries over from "Replicas", and I still ended up exactly where Plan C would have put me. This is where the linking gets really tricky, when a film is both a horror film AND a comedy, and/or features a bunch of actors better known for being in romantic films, which normally appear in February, so I really have to dig deep to find some people in this cast who have more than one horror film on their resumés...
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Zombieland" (Movie #2,178)
THE PLOT: Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock move to the American heartland as they face off against advanced zombies, fellow survivors and the growing pains of their snarky makeshift family.
AFTER: I'm only half joking here, because so many zombie movies treat this theoretical threat to humanity as if it's virus-based - how else can you explain that the bite from a zombie turns each victim into another zombie? I just don't know if this replicating process is sustainable at all, because if a zombie takes a bite and keeps on eating, how is there enough of a victim to form a new zombie? Admittedly, I'm not an expert, because I don't watch "The Walking Dead" or its spinoff show, and I haven't watched the really classic films like "Dawn of the Dead", I've only seen a few, like "28 Days Later", "World War Z", "Shaun of the Dead" and "The Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse". And they tend to make me ask the same questions over and over, like what happens when the zombies run out of people to eat? Do they eat animals, or each other, because they used to be people, right? Can zombies starve if they don't find food, and if so, how long does that take?
This sequel is set 10 years after the first "Zombieland" film, which does correspond neatly to the release dates, 2009 and 2019. I was willing to guess that the actors only looked about five years older, but I must be wrong. In the first film, our heroes made it to Los Angeles and found zombie Bill Murray in his mansion, but this time they're closer to the East Coast, and have decided to settle down, for a while, anyway, in the White House. Thankfully it's zombie-free, although you've got to figure there must have been a President at some point who failed to stop the zombie problem, perhaps by denying it, then getting infected himself to prove to the country that the virus was no big deal. I guess we can see now how that all turned out - not well.
Columbus and Wichita are still a couple, and they take up residence in the Lincoln Bedroom, while Tallahassee declares himself President - well, who's going to disagree? Of course this far into the Zombie Apocalypse, there's no organized government to speak of, all the cabinet members probably became zombies after some official staff super-spreader event. Gee, this film was really just a year ahead of its time, because except for the eating flesh bits, a lot of this feels like it maybe could come true! But after a while, all of Tallahassee's talk about making a pilgrimage to see Graceland gets into Little Rock's head, and she and her sister Wichita head out on the road. Columbus trying to take his relationship with Wichita to the next level might also have had something to do with this.
Columbus and Tallahassee hit a local mall for supplies, and find a girl who's been living in the safety of the food court's freezer since the attack began. She's Madison, as everyone post-zombie seems to be named after the city they're originally from. (Personal names just allow people to form attachments, and nobody wants to get too attached to people who may die soon from zombie attacks.). Nevertheless, Madison and Columbus hit it off and she joins him at the White House. And of course, this would be a terrible time for his old girlfriend to come back...
The group all sets off for Graceland (which is just outside of Memphis, I was there 3 years ago, minus five days) in a minivan to find Little Rock, and when they arrive, they're disappointed to see Elvis' former home in ruins. (Plus, they're still charging over 50 bucks admission!). Bucket list item achieved, well, sort of. So they de-camp at a nearly Elvis-themed hotel, where they meet the owner, Nevada, and are soon joined by Albuquerque and Flagstaff, another zombie-battling team that seems very familiar to them, almost too familiar. Columbus has his "Rules" for battling zombies, while Flagstaff has a similar number of "Commandments" to follow. This is no doubt a sort of tongue-in-cheek in-joke about how there are only so many character archetypes in action and horror movies, and probably the actors who play Flagstaff and Columbus have been up for the same smart, nerdy, Jewish twenty-something roles time and time again.
Meanwhile, there are new types of zombies evolving, ones that are smarter than "Homers", faster, stronger and very resilient, one team calls them "T-800's" after characters from the "Terminator" series, but the other team insists on calling them "Bolts", after Usain Bolt, and this leads to one of those insane theoretical arguments like whether the chicken or the egg came first, so bottom line, these characters are all much too alike to work together as a proper team. They're so alike that they can't ever see eye to eye, if that makes sense. Besides, as with "The Walking Dead", I assume, the life expectancy of extraneous characters is always very low.
Eventually they learn that Little Rock and her hippie/hipster boyfriend are heading for Babylon, a commune-like enclave that's protected itself from zombies by building a large wall, which might be another blatant reference to our current political system. (Zombies = Mexicans?). But it's an enclave full of peace-minded people, who don't allow weapons into their facility, and they melt down any weapons that people bring in. This, of course, could only be a problem if there was eventually going to be a zombie attack there. So guess what? Now, how are our heroes supposed to take down a horde of super-fast, super-resilient zombies with no guns, no axes, no traditional weapons? It's time to get creative...
The lesson here, and it's a good one, is that tough time call for tougher people, and only by sticking with one's family and working together can people defeat the virus. Also by following the rules, even though the rules here are things like "Beware of bathrooms", "double-knot your shoes" and "Ziploc bags", some things are universal. In our reality, in the time of the pandemic, we also need to follow rules, the big ones of course are "wash your hands often" and "wear a mask in public", but some rules are applicable in both situations, like "Don't be afraid to ask for help", "teamwork", "mind your manners" and so on. Things to keep in mind, because we really want to nip this coronavirus in the bud as soon as possible - because if I'm keeping it real, we still don't know for sure if this thing could mutate into the zombie virus. Right?
Be sure to stay tuned until the very end, because there's a bonus scene that explains how actor Bill Murray got zombie-fied, back in the very early days of the zombie pandemic - it occurred during a press junket for the (fictional, thank God) film "Garfield 3: Flabby Tabby", which shockingly was NOT subtitled "The Fat and the Furry-ous". Seems like a lost opportunity there for another in-joke. (Zombies = Entertainment Reporters?)
Also starring Woody Harrelson (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "The End of the Tour"), Emma Stone (last seen in "The Favourite"), Abigail Breslin (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Rosario Dawson (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Zoey Deutch (last seen in "Set It Up"), Avan Jogia (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Luke Wilson (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Victoria Hall, Victor Rivera, Ian Gregg (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Lucas Fleischer, Bill Murray (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Al Roker (ditto), Grace Randolph, Josh Horowitz, Lili Estefan
RATING: 6 out of 10 blown-out tires
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