Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Making Zombies Roll In Their Graves.

WARM BODIES (2013)
There is nothing worse than watching a movie with a truly great concept fall on its ass. It's a little like a getting box of rich, German chocolates only to find that they're covered in homeless man piss. It's not only disappointing; it's offensive. Because now that idea is done and can never be undone and maybe, maybe in ten years if anyone cares enough they'll redo it and try to re-salvage it, but chances are, it's already left such a bitter, acidic taste in everyone's mouth that they really don't want to touch it again. 

Such is the tragedy of Warm Bodies. I loved the concept. Really, I thought the idea of getting inside a zombie's head and watching them come back to life was very clever. And, for what it's worth, the first five minutes of the film delivered on that promise. We got to see him complaining about moving so slow and we got to see him grunting out conversations with his "friend." Everything was moving smoothly...until the movie actually started. I don't know; maybe something got lost in translation in the book-to-movie adaptation. Maybe someone just fell asleep at the wheel. Whatever happened, the movie moved far too fast, couldn't seem to focus on one plot, and didn't give us any real reason to care about the main characters.

To be perfectly honest, the only reason I hung in there was for "M," the zombie friend portrayed by Rob Corddry. His transition, at least, made a little sense and was enjoyable to watch. Other than that, the rest was just some lukewarm Shakespeare retelling with terrible CGI. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea; time to rewatch Shaun of the Dead (2004).

6 comments:

  1. LMAO!! I enjoyed this far more than I thought I would as I completely expecting twi-ified zombies. But I found myself actually enjoying it. Shocking, I know. Take away all my cool points right now. ;)

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    1. Keep your cool points! I think I just went in with far too high expectations. I should've anticipated some twi-zombies, then I would've enjoyed it a lot more. For some reason, I think I was expecting a little heavier dose of black comedy. But it IS a YA novel and the zombie is far too pretty so...yeah. I think I just set myself up for failure with this one.

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  2. I absolutely loved the first 20-30 minutes, but then as the plot happened, it became more and more clear that the plot is horrible. Also, the narrator, who was snarky and smart and funny, mostly stopped doing voiceover, so the tone of the movie changed *drastically* from clever to melodramatic.

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    1. I agree with you completely! The first 20-30 minutes were awesome. And then it just...went downhill. Very fast.

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  3. Well, a concept like this can only be really good or really bad M.

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    1. True, true. I was hoping against hope that it would be good.

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