Warm Bodies (2013) Romance for the Brain Dead Teen

Rating: 1/10 (24 June 2013)

R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie on a food run, and for zombies, that means brains. R kills one of the young leaders of the zombie resistance, named Perry, (Dave Franco) but spares Perry's girlfriend Julie, (Teresa Palmer) because he falls in love with her and it's love at first sight. Unfortunately, for R, Julies dad, Grigio, (John Malkovich) is the head honcho of the zombie resistance, to him, the only good zombie is a dead zombie. Despite the fact that R killed her boyfriend and ate his brains to relive his memories, and despite the fact that he is part of the undead, R rescues Julie from his fellow zombies, and in return Julie teaches him to drive a car. But it's not all beer and skittles, R and Julie have more than garden variety zombies to worry about. Hard-core skeleton zombies called Bonies are chasing after R and Julie, as is Julie's father . But a funny thing is happening to R, the longer he is on the run with Julie, the more alive he feels. Can R and Julie dodge her zombie killing dad and the Bonies long enough to save himself and Julie? What is Julie's reaction when he finds out that R killed Perry? Is R really coming back to life?
So this is what passes for romance these days? I was going to make some snide remark about Warm Bodies being Romeo and Juliet for the undead, but it really is based on Romeo and Juliet, maybe for the brain-dead slacker. R, and Julie are the names of the main characters, could the writers make it a little more obvious that this movie is sourced from Shakespeare? Maybe someone should tell the writers that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, obviously the writers read the Cliff Notes version of Romeo and Juliet. OK, forget for a minute that they butchered a classic, who finds a fully gassed up BMW convertible in the middle of a zombie apocalypse? That's just insulting to anyone's intelligence. I guess I'm too old for these angst-ridden teen dramadies, but I was expecting better. There's a clunky internal dialogue for R, because he's a zombie and basically sounds like Tarzan with a lobotomy when trying to form sentences. Wrap that all in a cheesy moral about the power of love, and you've got a real stinker on your hands. The lead actors look like the stepped out of some teen magazine, faces full of pain and angst, and John Malkovich tries to get some ironic laughs, playing a gun toting dad, but it doesn't work , the laughs are few and far between. The only person who gets any laughs at all is Asleigh Tipton, as Nora, Julie's skeptical friend. If you want to see a funny zombie movie, try Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead, both much funnier movies.
Warm Bodies: Dead on Arrival.
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