Dumb, predictable and not particularly funny

Rating: 3/10 (27 November 2013)

I didn't go into this film with particularly high expectations, but I did expect this film to be watchable at the very least due to its current IDMB rating of 7.7 and a metascore rating of 73. Sadly, I've found myself to be disappointed again.
The plot is about four survivors of the Zombie Apocalypse who are all strangers that have a common goal of trying to survive the zombie outbreak. We begin with Columbus (Eisenberg) and Tallahasse (Harrelson) whose names are not their real names, but names of the places that they are travelling to - this is due to Tallahasse not wanting to give his name and likewise he doesn't want to know Columbus's name. Their goals are fairly simple; Columbus wants to get to Columbus to see his parents and Tallahasse just wants twinkies. Later Columbus and Tallahasse bump into Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin) who are 2 sisters hiding from the zombies in a grocery store. They trick Columbus and Tallahasse into giving them their gun when Little Rock pretends to have been bitten by a zombie which prompts Tallahasse to give Wichita his gun when she says that she will shoot her sister. We learn that the girls are travelling to Pacific Place in LA to go to a fairground that they went to when they were kids. The girls then drive off in Columbus and Tallahasse's car, but the pair catch up with the girls later and this is when the four of them decide to stick together and try to get to their various destinations whilst killing any zombies that they encounter.
There were many problems with this film and the biggest problem for me is quite simply that it wasn't funny. I think I laughed maybe once or twice. It is obviously America's answer to Shaun of the Dead, but aside from being nowhere near as funny there also wasn't much chemistry between Eisenberg and Harrelson. That was one of the strengths between Pegg and Frost in both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The script also lacked the intelligence of both of those films.
The film was also littered with holes in the script and lapses in logic; why did Wichita and Little Rock switch all the power on at the fairground when it was obvious that all the noise and lights would attract all the zombies attention? One zombie is killed when someone pulls a doorbell and a piano falls on them. How original? Stupid? Yes, but I could have forgiven it if it had been funny.
Tallahasse and Columbus stumble across a car that happens to have a back seat full of machine guns when their gun has been stolen from them. How convenient? There was also Columbus's character and his rules; at the start of the film he shouts out four different rules which I thought was quite funny, but then when the old rules are repeated throughout the film with the odd new rule thrown in, it quickly grew repetitive and became less and less funny each time I heard it.
Zombieland does get a few things right; I quite liked how Wichita and Little Rock were written into the story. The way that they both outsmart Columbus and Tallahasse on two separate occasions was funny to watch. I felt that the character development was also pretty good (considering the genre) and we learn a little bit about all of the characters along the way (particularly Columbus and Tallahasse both of which I ended up feeling some sympathy for towards the end).
The biggest sin that this film commits is that it just isn't funny and the script is littered with holes in it (the latter could perhaps be forgiven slightly as films of this nature are generally not meant to be taken seriously). In the end, it just felt like a lame rip off of Shaun of the Dead. Disappointing!