Shaun
of the Dead (**)
review by Jon
Waterman
Shaun is stuck in a rut. During the day, he works as a low-rung
manager of a retail store. At night, he plays video games with
his roommate for a while before heading off to the Winchester
Pub. His girlfriend is sick of it. She wants to go out and
have fun and explore the city, etc. So, Liz breaks up with
Shaun and he has to try to figure out a good way to win her
back. But that’s not the least of his problems, because
evidently overnight a space probe crashed into Earth. This
collision woke the dead. So, not only does Shaun have to woo
his girl back into his arms, he has to make sure that random
zombies don’t eat those arms first.
I left this movie feeling disappointment. There’s such
a great concept, with plenty of material to work with and exploit
here and it felt very flat. Part of that could be the British
wit (written by Simon Pegg who plays Shaun and Edgar Wright
who also directs). A bigger part of that is that most of the
jokes come from references to other movies. Now, if you haven’t
seen a whole lot of zombie flicks, you won’t catch these
jokes to begin with. If you have, the references won’t
really be enough to “raise your dead”pan expression
much more than a quick smile. The funniest stuff here is the
conversational humor and the non-zombie related material.
It seems like the film tries too hard to be hip. Part of that,
once again, is referencing the shooting style of horror movies.
But there’s one scene in particular that got annoying
and very boring in a hurry. There’s a scene where Shaun
is discussing the plans for the rest of the day, including
picking up his mother and saving his girlfriend, etc. In this
scene there’s a series of rapid-fire stylistic cuts a
la “Requiem for a Dream.” I suppose that’s
all well and good, but then they proceed to revise their order
and add new events and it just drags out incessantly. Too much
story, not enough zombie action.
This probably is the best intentionally comedic zombie movie
you can see, but I can’t really think of any others.
Mel Brooks hasn’t tapped that genre yet, right? I’m
sure there will be a lot of hardcore horror/zombie fans that
will just eat this stuff up. No pun intended. But I just couldn’t
get into it. As farces go, this one is pretty good. It covers
a lot of the bases. As comedies go, it misses the mark. Maybe
I would have liked it better if his name were Shawn instead
of Shaun.
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