A Nutshell Review: Zombieland

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2009)

Note to self: Lose weight and start working on that cardio program!
Should recent apocalyptic films be believed, one of these days we're going to be hit with a virus out of the blue, either engineered or a force sent by Nature, that we're going to turn into angry blood-lusting zombies eager to munch on our fellow man, and woman. And should that day arrive, like in 28 Days/Weeks Later, the Resident Evil franchise, and now Zombieland, working out will become too late too soon, since these new aged zombies sprint with full force compared to George A. Romero's lumbering undead.
In fact, Zombieland could spawn a franchise of its own too, since it has solid back stories established for each of its main characters - the geeky Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), redneck ace zombie killer Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), and con-sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) who together just seem to be always one step ahead of the boys, thanks to the advantage of gender and some major trust issues, which in any zombie flick you'll know come into play since one can be expected to off a close one in the event that they turn, for self-preservation reasons naturally.
Narrated by Columbus, do remember to look for this film from the video store (or your home video library which I will urge you to get) should things outside start to suggest the onset of something ugly. Things like when your wildest fantasy, or Columbus' with that hot chick neighbour from apartment number 406 (Amber Heard, whom all the boys would like to know) start knocking at your door from out of the blue. Contained within this film are 32 rules - OK, so most didn't make it to the final cut but the important ones definitely did - to surviving a zombie onslaught, #1 of which is Cardio (note to self again).
Director Ruben Fleischer plays it fast and loose, with plenty of sight gags to boot, especially when reminding us all, like an instructional video, on all the positive examples from Columbus' rulebook, complete with an animated take of the rules themselves. And the relatively short runtime of coming under 90 minutes just makes you beg, yeah beg, for more, which of course is a good thing.
The casting here's something to die for as well, with Woody Harrelson heading up the motley crew as the cool as a cucumber zombie executioner with a sensitive heart, continuing his comedic turn in recent years and from his last big budgeted action film 2012. Jeese Eisenberg's relatively new, but plays the formula geek down to a subtle pat. I haven't really seen Emma Stone as a tough-as-nails cookie, so here's one for the road, and Abigail Breslin might just have taken on her first action-movie role aside from her usual dramatic ones.
It's been a long time since I experienced that much fun from a film, so I'll go ahead and rate this as highly recommended and a firm contender for one of the top films of this year. Last I heard a sequel's coming up too!