Zombieland ***

Zombieland sounds like a theme park, so it makes sense the climax of this zom-com takes place in Pacific Playland, a fictional amusement park outside of Los Angeles. The movie stars rollercoaster alum Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland) as Columbus, a shy college student who managed to survive the zombie apocalypse because he follows a list of survival rules. He soon meets up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a zombie-killing, Bill Murray-loving, Twinkie-craving kind of a guy, and the two of them become the last bromance in z-land.

The film’s plot is pretty standard for zombie movies. Both Columbus and Tallahassee have experienced a tragic loss, and each are seeking solace in survival. They meet up with Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), a pair of sisters headed for L.A. in hopes of finding a zombie-free zone and recapturing some happy memories from their childhood. We learn a bit of back story on each of these characters through flashbacks, but the film’s primary concern is laughter, not story.

And there is much laughter to be had. Director Ruben Fleischer integrates Columbus’s rules to survive Zombieland in pop-up text on the screen, and it is one of the funnier gags throughout the movie. As for the characters, Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg have good chemistry as the mismatched duo and both are very funny. They are a sort of odd couple for the post-apocalyptic twenty-first century.

But it is Columbus, who narrates the film, to whom we relate. He falls pretty hard for Wichita, which is more daring than it sounds considering the last girl he shared a fleeting moment with ended up trying to eat him. In one scene, Columbus makes the decision to stay with the group instead of heading back to his hometown in Ohio (as in Columbus). For once in his life, Columbus feels like part of a family, and it’s obvious that his feelings for Wichita are more than platonic.

The group continues to move west, bickering along the way, eventually making it to Los Angeles. The last ten minutes of the film ups the zombie body count by about a thousand, and in a pivotal moment, Columbus deliberately breaks one of his rules (gasp!). In sum, Zombieland is America’s answer to Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s brilliant British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead. That film was more subtle and nuanced, yet somehow still broader and funnier. There are flashes of brilliance in Zombieland to match it, especially in the sequence where the characters crash in the Hollywood home of a star that’s at the tippity top of the A-list. As a whole, though, Zombieland is good fun, but it’s no Shaun of the Dead.

Rule #24: Double Tap Feature.