Shaun of the Dead
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Movie Reviews of Shaun of the Dead
Movie Review: Everything you would expect in a zombie comedy and more
Summary: 5 Stars
Hearing that "Shaun of the Dead" is the most popular British zombie comedy of all time does give one pause, simply because you have to stop for a second and wonder as to whether you have simply missed other British zombie comedies or if you maybe took "28 Day Later" way too seriously. The thing is that when you hear "British zombie comedy" you are thinking "Monty Python's Flying Circus" or "Benny Hill" or "Black Adder" or "Asbolutely Fabulous" or "Coupling." You are not thinking something that is as restrained as what Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have put together (the pair co-wrote the film, Pegg stars as Shaun and Wright directs), which is probably the biggest surprise of all.
"Shaun of the Dead" is only four star funny, so we are not even close to "Airplane!" territory, which is still the funniest film of all time (measured in number of laughs generated) but there is another dimension to the film beyond the humor. The tagline tries to tells us that this movie is: "A romantic comedy. With zombies." The really funny thing is that, underneath it all, it really is a romantic comedy. You know: boy meets girl, girl dumps boy, zombies try to kill boy and girl and mom and flat mates, boy tries to rescue girl and mom and flat mates, so on and so forth.
Actually the movie that that came to mind the most, despite the references to the great zombie movies of the past ("We're coming to get you, Barbara!"), was "Young Frankenstein," specifically in terms of the scenes that are played totally straight. There are scenes when Shaun deals with his girl, Liz (Kate Ashfield), his mom, Barbara (Penelope Wilton), and his best bud, Ed (Nick Frost) that are done like they were in a romantic comedy, and not an Adam Sandler "Water Boy" type romantic comedy, but an Adam Sandler "50 First Dates" type romantic comedy. Stripped of the zombies this is a rather pedestrian romantic comedy, but what makes it inspired lunacy is that it IS being done in the middle of a zombie movie.
There are two prime moments that reflect this rather amazing tightrope walking act. One is when Shaun almost breaks and notes that there may be a limit as to how many people he loves that he can shoot in one day. The other is when we have one of those "goodbye" scenes usually found in war movies; it is not just the silliness of the particular bit of business returning from the start of the movie, but that it is brought back at that particular moment, and that both actors honestly treat it as the most serious thing in the world. Tragedy is hard, but comedy is harder, and then there is treating tragedy as comedy in the middle of a zombie movie. Watching this movie is like watching somebody take a stupid shot in a basketball game and you start saying, "No, no, no, no, no..." until the ball rips through the nets and then you smile and say "Great shot!"
The other great bit of fun is how "Shaun of the Dead" plays with the genre movies. The opening of the film throws every cliché moment of being suddenly surprised by zombies in the history of the cinema at Shaun, only to have everything be normal. So you know they will take a totally different tack when it comes to Shaun realizing he has missed the dawn of the dead. The bit you have seen in the preview about arguing over which LPs to use as weapons to fight the living dead is cute, but the comic masterpiece in this film is Shaun channel surfing. Every single channel is talking about what is happening, but Shaun is clicking so rapidly that he misses getting a complete picture. Note: always listen to what is on the telly in the background: that is where the best "28 Days Later" joke in the film comes (All of the talking heads are actually British television news talking heads, so translate that into Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather doing the same thing for an American movie; see the "TV BITS" in the DVD extras).
The more you know about zombie movies the more you will enjoy "Shaun of the Dead," because you will be able to pick up on all the specific references. But then I have never seen "Spaced," so all of the homages to that British situation comedy involving Pegg, Frost and Wright are lost on me and I am doing okay at the moment. Either way, I think the humor of the film is accessible to even zombie movie neophytes, although the only way you might be able to talk them into seeing this one is to tell them their other choice is "Dawn of the Dead" (I do not have to tell anyone that is a rather obvious double bill).
Of the DVD extras the extended bits and outtakes in "MISSING BITS" are okay, but by favorite are the trio of "Plot Holes," where we get some insights into what we did not see in the movie from three of the principle characters. These are presented in comic book form as opposed to having actual footage, but that simply adds to their charm. There are better bits in "RAW MEAT," the highlight of which is the "pitch" by Pegg and Wright to sell the studio their movie idea. I already talked about the "TV BITS," and no one will be surprised that I the Zombie Trivia available via the ZOMB-O-METER. Overall, the DVD extras are well above average but not knock down dead, get up as a reanimated corpse and try to eat human flesh great.
Movie Review: Panic on the Streets of London
Summary: 5 Stars
Look: stop griping. Stop worrying about your lives. Shaun, eponymous cricket-bat wielding hero and ambitionless Foree Electronics employee, has *real* problems. For instance:
1) His love life sucks.
2) His professional life sucks.
3) His best friend is a hopeless slacker who has turned his couch into a kind of fetid nest and spends his entire days wasting away playing X-Box.
4) Oh, and the Dead Walk: Zombies are walking the streets of London and tearing up flesh, and they're equal opportunity offenders with a taste for the guts of any Briton, yuppie *or* slacker.
This is one of those rare little horror gems in which you can believe the hype---and frankly, when I went to see "Shaun of the Dead", I was already set *against* the movie: I hate flicks that come to the megaplex ready to do battle after having been given a Super Hype Aerial Shock & Awe campaign by the Indie Movie Establishment.
I stand corrected: "Shaun of the Dead" is a zombie movie/horror movie/movie-of-all-time classic, and easily ranks in my top three zombie movies ever made. And mind you, I live, eat, breathe, sleep, and chainsaw these things. Yes, those who hate horror will tell you they love "Shaun" because it's all about "characters": ; Shaun (Simon Pegg, the flick's writer and note-perfect as the reluctant zombie slayer), a one-time pathetic directionless loser who gets *very* good with a cricket bat; Liz (Kate Ashfield, very plummy), Shaun's disaffected squeeze who wants to "live a little"; Mum (Penelope Wilton as "Barbara"), always looking on the Sunny Side even when she's undergoing a really major life change (as in, dietary change, as in, sudden interest in blood and guts); Philip (the amazing English actor Bill Nighy, who I didn't even recognize in this flick---he played the Uber-Vampire Viktor in "Underworld"---who knew?), who takes care of his Jaguar to the bitter end.
Yeah, it has characters.
But you know something? "Shaun of the Dead" is a full-bodied, full-blooded horror movie. It's just one of those rarest of ghoulish gemstones: a horror movie with a wickedly black sense of humor and an impeccable, deeply British, sense of timing. And the timing here is perfect. For my money, the scene in which Shaun goes for some beer in his devastated, zombie-overrun London burb---completely oblivious to the carnage---is one of the best sequences in cinematic history.
I haven't seen "Spaced", the TV series that "Shaun" director Edgar Wright helmed, but I can say that for a relative newcomer Wright can wield a mean camera. He's backed up by cinematographer David Dunlap, who serves as heavy weapons tech on on the cinematic black magic: my God, this movie looks good! And let's back up a bit---this flick was shot for 4 million bucks. For 4 million bucks, Edgar Wright has conjured up a trillion times the ungodly flesh-eating slack-jawed glassy-eyed zombie horror that "Resident Evil 2" did---and *that* movie cost 10 times that much. Question: which flick delivered the most pure, unadulterated, zombie-brain-blasting goodness?
"Shaun of the Dead" succeeds, largely, by animating more than just dead bodies. First off, don't believe the "romantic comedy" angle---yeah, Shaun has to square the circle with his lovey, but this is a brutal, no holds-barred, don't skimp on the Red Sauce and juicy intestines Captain kinda flick. It's intensely horrific, insanely gripping, and happily disgusting. I wasn't expecting that.
And best of all, this is one of the few zombie flicks that really burrow down into the guts of what it's like to have to put down someone you love: someone who's confused, who loved you, who tucked you into bed at night when you were a kid, who now exists for one thing and one thing only---to tear off the top of your scalp and sink her cancred yellow tusks into your brainpan. "Shaun of the Dead" brings it all home with a double-basrreled shotgun of dread, and for that I salute Edgar Wright.
But look: the real triumph of "Shaun of the Dead" is that it sets up a seamless, banal, everyday urban environment, and overruns it with pure horror. And you *believe* it. You are engaged: when Shaun and Ed (Nick Frost in priceless rat-faced X-Box playing slacker mode) confront a zombie in their backyard, they don't know what to do with the thing. Is she drunk? They laugh, up to the point where she bares her fangs and tries to give Shaun an impromptu tracheotomy.
Now: watch Shaun and Ed's reaction when they're putting their first zombie down. This is not irony: not humor: not comedy: it's pure, unadulterated horror and something more---and that something more is what fuels "Shaun of the Dead", and makes it the classic it is: it is a ferocious, angry sadness---indignation!---at the passing of the world they knew, the world of X-Box, Indian take-out, ruthless slacking, late-night binges, and drinking bouts at the Winchester. It's the end of the world as we know it, and we don't feel fine. To be honest, we feel murderous. Drink up, Mate, and pass the ammunition.
Movie Review: Flesh-eaters are funny
Summary: 5 Stars
If you're tired of the lowest-common-denominator genre films that Hollywood seems to be pumping out at record pace, Shaun of the Dead may be just what you're looking for. Originally released on the other side of the pond, this English horror-comedy seamlessly blends intense zombie terror and wry humor without ever coming off as forced or condescending. Shaun of the Dead clearly has a lot of fun playing with horror movie conventions, especially those of (duh) zombie movies, and it does so in such a fast-paced manner, and with special effects that are so much more impressive than you'd expect to see in such a low-budgeted movie, that it's almost impossible not to enjoy it. Titles aside, there are a few thematic parallels to be found with Dawn of the Dead (largely the frequent shifts in tone), but this is not, I repeat, NOT a tribute, a parody, or anything else of that nature. Shaun of the Dead is its own creation, one that takes Romero's Dead trilogy as its starting point but comes up with more than enough inspired ideas of its own. It's billed as "A smash hit romantic comedy...with zombies," and while that description isn't too far off, the movie actually encompasses a significantly broader range of styles.
It's rare for movies to work on this many levels, but Shaun of the Dead is such a great movie largely because it's so wide-ranging in tone: at its best, it perfectly encapsulates the combination of high comedy, horror, and drama that is everyday life, zombies or no zombies. Indeed, the shambolic walking undead are just the latest in a series of troubles facing the movie's title character. In fact, they come along at a somewhat opportune time in light of the catharses that Shaun faces in the early going, as the movie's first half-hour sees its 29-year-old protagonist facing something of an early mid-life crisis. After all, when your girlfriend has just dumped you, you're stuck in a dead-end job at an electronics store, and your roommates are at each other's throats, there's nothing like an army of faceless zombies trying to (literally) tear you a new one to give you some perspective. In this movie, the undead may intrude upon the world of the living, but that doesn't mean the trials of everyday life get put on hold. If anything, they're magnified. In that sense, aside from supplying the movie with some grisly frights and plenty of nasty gore, then, the zombies serve as a mighty fine plot device, enabling Shaun to find the assertiveness and determination he needs to get his life together while simultaneously handling the more mundane task of staying alive. Much of the appeal of Shaun of the Dead actually comes from watching Shaun evolve from a confused, directionless underachiever into the decisive man of action that he is by film's end.
And of course, it doesnt hurt that the movie's incredibly watchable from beginning to end, and undeniably hilarious for much of that time as well. Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the script with Pegg, directs the movie with a manic, stylish, and ruthless efficiency that keeps things moving briskly from one wildly entertaining set piece to another. Slapstick humor effortlessly shares space with plenty of dry British wit, with several truly unforgettable scenes along the way: you've got Shaun and his best friend Ed fending off the advances of a zombie while thinking she's just drunk; Shaun and company trying to impersonate zombies long enough to make it through a crowd of them to safety; and a rollicking three-person zombie beatdown with pool cues set to the tune of Queen. In the next breath, though, the movie can have you sweating, as there's plenty here for fans of blood and guts. Heads explode, zombies get impaled, throats get bitten, and one poor guy gets torn to pieces while still very much alive.
As though the movie isn't enough, the DVD release contains tons of time-wasting extras to enhance the viewing experience. As a whole the supplemental material provides all kinds of insight into the experience of making the movie, from Simon Pegg's video diary; to the flipboard Pegg and Wright used to sum up the plot; to special effects comparisons; to extended scenes laden with commentary. Since the movie was made with a pretty small budget, it's interesting to see how the filmmakers had to work around monetary limitations while at the same time making a movie that steps outside of genre limitations. Needless to say, you should pick up the widescreen edition if at all possible, as the picture quality on it is decidedly sweet, but whatever the case Shaun of the Dead is a movie that should not be missed.
Movie Review: A superb British parody of DAWN OF THE DEAD
Summary: 5 Stars
As one might expect, SHAUN OF THE DEAD is a parodic remake of the classic George Romero film DAWN OF THE DEAD. It pays frequent homage to the latter film through a host of direct references as well as its general subject matter (for instance, much of the "news" as read by the television presenters are lifted nearly word for word from Romero's script). There differences are, however, marked. Instead of an American location, this film is set in London. And instead of holing up in a house to fight it out against the zombies, our heroes travel to a local pub.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed this film, there is no question that not everyone finds this film that funny. I'm not sure why that is, but I thought it would be fun to bat around some theories about why the reactions have been so diverse. This is an important exercise for prospective viewers. Are you more likely to side with those who find this to be a highly effective and funny farce or those who simply don't find anything funny at all? So here are my speculations:
First, I think some of those who do not like the movie failed to realize that this is an English comedy, with a very low-key, subdued approach to the story. Before going to see this, I think a prospective viewer should answer is whether or not they enjoy MONTY PYTHON, Hugh Grant, THE OFFICE, and other British comic productions. If the answer is "Yes" there is a high degree of probability that you will enjoy this one. If the answer is "Absolutely not!" then you will almost certainly dislike this one.
Second, I think some people, hearing the basic premise, imagine that this is going to be a bit like SCARY MOVIE or some other such parody of a genre. I know for a fact that the couple sitting behind me in the viewing I went to had expectations along these lines. They were expecting more out and out farce, a more frenetic pace, and far more jokes and cartoonish humor. But because SHAUN OF THE DEAD is more deliberately paced, allows the absurd tale to unfold gradually, and the jokes rationed out more gradually, they were truly upset.
I love British humor so I definitely fall more into the class of people apt to enjoy this. I loved the pacing and subdued reactions of the main characters. I loved, for instance, a pair of scenes that are allowed to unfold rather slowly. The first occurs rather early in the movie when Shaun leaves his apartment and out of sheer habit walks across the street and down the sidewalk to the local corner store where he buys a couple of items. The very same path is followed the next morning, with Shaun without thinking (almost zombie-like?) covers the same path to the store, utterly unaware of how dramatically everything has changed, of all the people he had seen the day before who had been transformed into zombies or been killed. They were superbly executed scenes, and it is hard to imagine any American studio allowing a scene in a zombie comedy film to unfold so nicely.
There are many wonderful scenes in the film, some very short and some a bit longer. I loved, for instance, the store employee who interrupted a meeting to accept a call on his cell phone. Or the extraordinary scene later in the film when, to get through a group of zombies, the group of friends mimic the behavior of zombies in order to get past them. Their rehearsing their imitations of zombies was one of the best scenes in the film. Bill Nighy, who pretty much stole the show (despite being part of an ensemble cast) in LOVE ACTUALLY as the burned out rock musician, is in a number of nice moments in a regretfully small part.
I really loved the great teamwork between stars Simon Pegg and David Frost. Both had worked together before on TV in SPACED, and Pegg co-wrote the screenplay with director Edgar Wright, also of SPACED. The cast as a whole is quite strong, though I did find the character of David to be just a tad too irritating.
All in all, I really had a great time seeing this one and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys British humor. But if overly broad, in-your-face American style farce along the lines of SCARY MOVIE is what you want, you'd better skip this one.
Movie Review: British Zombies
Summary: 5 Stars
I was really looking forward to seeing 'Shaun of the Dead', and since it never came to any local theaters despite the fact that it was outperforming half the films showing at those places even with a limited release, I got to look forward to seeing it even longer. (um, yay. A fate to which House of Flying Daggers is no doubt consigned) Fortunately, it proved to be more than worth the wait, and was definitely one of the best movies in a fairly ho-hum year. As far as comedies go, I think this movie's about as good as it gets. Of course, I'm a big horror fan, and a big zombie fan, in particular, so this is pretty much aimed right at me. Still, 'Shaun of the Dead' probably has a lot more general appeal than your typical Horror-Comedy, and I think it should appeal to must people who like comedies that, ya know, don't suck.
Alright, basic setup. Shaun is a 29 year old guy, who's kinda aimless and going nowhere, at least partially due to his bestfriend/roomate Ed, who's a fat, immature loser. So, his girlfriend, Liz, dumps him, and he and Ed get really drunk, and where ever the film was heading before is interrupted, as England is then overrun by zombies. Unlike the more famous horror-comedy films (Evil Dead II, Re-Animator, Dead-Alive), this film actually takes itself fairly seriously at times. (Particularly towards the end, where the characters are all holed in together, appear to be pretty much doomed, and start fighting one another.) Some people have gone so far as to say this is more Horror film than Comedy, which is massively overstating it, but it's certainly not purely light-hearted fare either. Lots of people think this is a bad thing, but I certainly don't. It works very well both when it's trying to be funny and when it's trying to be serious/dramatic/touching, and I always like films that are willing to play with tone.(one of the best aspects of the original Dawn of the Dead, imo) I also particularly like the more serious bits, because it makes it abundantly obvious that the makers of the film have a genuine affection for the genre they're parodying.
The film has a level a visual flair and an attention to detail which are pretty extraordinary for a comedy, and quite impressive, regardless of genre. They use lots of great long, steadicam shots and some fun, ultra-kinetic, rapid fire editing. (used to comedic, rather than dramatic effect) The detail comes in how there's lots going on in the background, and how the film likes to repeat similar scenarios, before and after the zombie attack, and of course, the numerous references to other films. They're particularly fond of referencing the original Living Dead trilogy, naturally, with a particular penchant for the Evil Dead films as well. Still, it doesn't rely on Horror films alone, referencing The Deer Hunter and Reservoir Dogs, and British tv shows, and probably lots of other stuff I didn't catch. I also like how it has the will to be subtle- you probably won't notice the references if you aren't familiar with the original material. (i.e. there aren't any moments in the film where it's abundantly obvious that what someone did/said was a reference so something, but you don't know what it is. At least there weren't for me)
Reviewing comedies is hard. All I can say is that I though it was funny. Very funny. It smarter than your average comedy, I suppose, but it isn't afraid of slapstick or lowbrow humor either. Going into specifics would be pretty fruitless, and hurt the film when you actually see it, so I won't bother. You'll just have to trust me on this one.
It's also got a surprising amount of gore, which is generally nicely done. There are quite a few nicely done gunshots, and two particularly stunning headshots. Furthermore, this film doesn't ever let us forget that zombies eat flesh, and there's scene of someone being ripped limb from limb which recalls a number of deaths from Dawn and Day of the Dead simultaneously. The zombies themselves look quite nice, though they are fairly low-key.
Yeah, that's about it. Definitely a great movie, which certainly must be viewed by any zombie fan.