Woody Harrelson gives a funny, loopy turn as the zombie-bashing road warrior with a lust for Hostess' Twinkies in "Zombieland."
About the movie
Zombieland
Rating: 
Cast:
Jesse Eisenberg; Woody Harrelson; Emma Stone; Abigail Breslin
Directed by:
Ruben Fleischer
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Gore, gags in raucous road flick
From its inventive opening credits to a surprise cameo and accompanying laugh-riot Ghostbusters homage, the zom-com Zombieland delivers gore and gags in equally satisfying spurts, so to speak. (There's lots of projectile body fluid.) It also boasts one of the funniest, loopiest Woody Harrelson turns in years.
A Mad magazine-like counterpoint to the forthcoming post-apocalyptic grimfest The Road, Zombieland is set in a wasteland where blood-spewing flesh-eaters roam what's left of the U.S. of A. A crazy virus has infected the population, and only a lucky few, or unlucky few, have managed to stay untainted.
One gamer-nerd college student, nicknamed Columbus because he's heading home to the Ohio town where, hopefully, his parents still live, is among the survivors. As played by Jesse Eisenberg, the droll, nervous ninny of Adventureland and The Squid and the Whale, Columbus is the first-person protagonist of first-time director Ruben Fleischer's raucous road movie.
Columbus has survived thus far thanks to a serious case of OCD: He has a list of rules (avoid public rest rooms and fasten your seat belt, not to mention the more zombie-specific "double-tap" rule) and sticks to them. The kid makes an oddball companion to Tallahassee - Harrelson's character, a zombie-bashing road warrior with a furious lust for Hostess' Twinkies - when the two team up on a carnage-strewn interstate.
Originally heading east, the unlikely duo soon meet two sisters - Little Rock (Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin) and Wichita (Superbad's Emma Stone). The girls aren't as helpless as they first appear, but after a couple of wary, scary encounters, the foursome turn their wheels around and head west together. Word has it that there's a zombie-free colony in a California amusement park.
Like Shaun of the Dead, the film parodies and pays tribute to its genre antecedents and inspirations. There are gory nods to George Romero's cannibal canon, and the aforementioned "Who you gonna call?" stoner salute to Ghostbusters. Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (of Spike TV's Invasion Iowa and The Joe Schmo Show) go gonzo with the comedy, and Eisenberg and Harrelson share inspired moments of lunacy: the former deadpan and neurotic, the latter wild-eyed and weird. When Tallahassee finally sinks his teeth into one of his beloved junk-food snacks - his quest for Twinkies is akin to Lancelot's for the Holy Grail - the close-up of Harrelson's mad mug is truly sublime.
Contact movie critic Steven Rea
at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.
Read his blog, "On Movies Online," at http://www.philly.com/philly/
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