Charming, but totally illogical

Rating: 5/10 (25 January 2013)

Warm Bodies does for zombies what Twilight did for vampires. If that excites you, see it. If that prospect offends you, run away.
This is a charming love story that has to be taken on its own terms, although it sometimes violates its own logic, which I will get to later. It concerns a hipster zombie with an internal life, but external limitations. He builds himself a home in a plane in an abandoned airport, which for some reason still has a functioning power grid. He's guilt ridden and conflicted, but still drawn to human flesh. He wanders off with other zombies seeking food and comes to a human settlement protected by a group of armed young people. After eating one of the soldiers, he develops a crush on what turns out to be that soldier's girlfriend. He takes her back to his airplane home, where he does a Beauty and the Beat winning her over montage and their eventual love begins reconnecting zombies with their human emotion. There are additional eviler zombies who have lost all connection to their former selves who become the true enemies of all concerned. The question is whether this young zombie/human love affair can restore peace, and return the zombies to their former selves.
Any Comicon attending horror fan is going to bristle at the portrayal of zombies in this movie. They move either fast or slow depending on what the scene requires, and it seems the more they deteriorate the faster they become. The cause of Zombie Apocalypse is unexplained and the timeline is way out of whack. At first we assume it happened around 1990, since our hero has a record player and plays recordings prior to that time. In a suburban home, a Polaroid camera is sitting around ready to use. However, there are references to iPods and a featured song that was a hit last year. How did they have time to build a huge wall and settlement in a few months' time? And is this problem limited to one area? Also, we have lapses in romantic logic. The heroine seems completely unfazed that her zombie boyfriend killed and dismembered her handsome boyfriend whom she appeared to get along with. She never even raises her voice in protest. In the beginning, she is a tough soldier but all fight goes out of her when she becomes the romantic interest. How does this rotting zombie smell? Wouldn't that turn her off? Also, if she is a hipster with Sonic Youth posters on her wall who knows her way around vinyl, why does she look like a sorority girl with a wardrobe from Banana Republic? ButÂ… there are also scenes, like a makeover montage, where the movie winks at you and lets you know you're not supposed to take it too seriously. So I'm giving it a halfway grade. It is charming and sweet and fun at times but really doesn't add much to the romance or horror genres.