ZOMBIELAND: 4 STARS

Making a horror comedy is tricky business. Do it right and you get a classic like “Sean of the Dead,” a movie whose body count is offset by just the right amount of laughs. Do it wrong and you’ll wind up with “Repossessed,” a movie that is neither funny nor scary, just dull. “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer (whose next movie is to be called Psycho Funky Chimp) understands that horror comedies are neither fish nor fowl—they are both. For every decapitation you have to have a giggle and “Zombieland” delivers on both counts.  

This post-apocalyptic zom com stars Jesse Eisenberg as a teenage curmudgeon who has survived a fast acting viral plague that turned his neighbors (and everybody else) into ferocious flesh eating zombies. Mad cow became mad person which became mad zombie disease! It should be a paradise for this videogame playing hermit—no facebook status updates!—but a life spent killing ravenous zombies has left him starving for human contact. When he meets zombie killer Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), and two dishonest sisters, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), he realizes for better or worse, they must stick together to survive.

“Zombieland” has the same over-the-top silly vibe that makes movies like “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” such guilty pleasures. It’s gross-out funny with plenty of action and zombie kills for the hardcores, but underneath the absurdity is a message about humanity. At the end of the movie Eisenberg’s character realizes that his solitary life was turning him into the thing he feared most. “Without other people,” he says, “you might as well be a zombie.” The sentiment may not be as powerful as George A. Romero’s zombie metaphors but it puts a nice little bow on this coming of age story.     

Also strong is the casting. Eisenberg, a young actor second only to Michael Cera in playing awkward teens on film, is an unlikely action movie hero, but here he plays to his strengths—playing the witty self-conscious teen—and expands his range to include zombie serial killer.

Equally fun is Woody Harrelson as the Twinkie loving zombie hunter Tallahassee. Harrelson brings a swagger and some unexpected twists to the character and delivers many of the film’s funniest lines.

Both are ably supported by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin who don’t have as have much to do as the boys, but do a great deal to keep the story moving forward.
The showiest role in the film, however, belongs to a Hollywood superstar who has one of the most surreal cameos in recent memory. I’m not going to tell you who it is (it’s funnier if you don’t know) but his wild scenes alone are worth the price of admission.  

“Zombieland” breathes a bit of new life into the sometimes stale zombie genre.

ZACH AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO: 3 STARS

Within the first five minutes of Zach and Miri Make a Porno director Kevin Smith establishes the tone of the next ninety minutes. Mere moments after the opening credits he unleashes bathroom jokes, racial jabs and a sequence involving burning pubic hair. It’s not for the faint of heart, but then again the faint of heart likely wouldn’t be caught dead at a movie about two platonic friends who decide to make a pornographic movie to raise money to pay their bills.

“If it’s so easy why doesn’t everyone do it?” asks a skeptical Miri.

“Because other people have options and dignity… which we don’t have,” replies Zach in one of the film’s better exchanges.

Seth Rogen, Hollywood’s go-to Canadian funnyman, and Elizabeth Banks, Rogen’s 40 Year Old Virgin cast mate, play the titular roommates. When their water, electricity and heat are shut off for non-payment of bills on the eve of their high school reunion their already dire situation gets much, much worse. After a chance meeting with a gay porn star (a very funny Justin Long) they hit on the idea of making dirty movies for fun and profit. Well, mostly for profit. “Paris Hilton makes a night vision sex tape,” says Zach, “and now she’s selling perfume to tweens!” After a casting session turns up some willing actors and actresses they begin production on an ill fated erotic reimagining of Star Wars but as the clothes come off and the cameras roll Zach and Miri reveal much more about themselves than what’s under their clothes.
    
As usual director Kevin Smith, of Clerks and Mallrats fame, manages to be saccharine and over-the-top vulgar simultaneously—a recipe that Judd Apatow has perfected in recent years—although nothing here approaches the gross out of 2006’s Clerks II. Even a gag about an… unusual cure for constipation comes off as cute. Smith, however, is still better at making us laugh than warming our hearts which is Zach and Miri’s main downfall.

The comedy works more often than not, but when the movie switches to full-on romance mode it flops around more than overenthusiastic actors in amateur porn. Banks has the right stuff to be funny, sexy and romantic on-screen and Rogen displays his usual goofy charm, but Smith’s script has too many gaps in logic—I know, it’s a sex comedy, but it should still make sense—to make the relationship aspect believable, let alone something the audience would really care about.
Zach and Miri Make a Porno features frequently endearing characters, some funny supporting work from real live porn stars—Katie Morgan as a big-hearted but dumb stripper and Traci Lords—and a performance from Justin Long that is guaranteed to become a youtube favorite but it lacks the heart of Rogen’s others films, most notably Knocked Up and Superbad, and gets bogged down when it tries to hammer home its sappy “ain’t love grand” ending.

ZATHURA: 3 ½ STARS

Zathura is more than just a Jumanji wannabe. If that sentence didn’t make any sense to you its because you’ve forgotten about the 1995 movie Jumanji starring Robin Williams. Both movies are based on Chris Van Allsburg books and both are flights of fantasy based on board games that come to life. Beyond that they have little in common. Jumanji was a big budget special effects spectacular that I felt let the effects overwhelm the story. Zathura is about two brothers and an mysterious board game that beams them into outer space, but Elf director Jon Favreau never lets the human element of the story get washed away by the effects. Even though there are black holes, menacing robots, evil lizard-like space creatures named Zorgons and a cryogenically frozen sister, he wisely keeps the focus on the boys and their relationship. Zathura is an action-oriented family film with a sly sense of humor and a healthy dose of sentiment but without the gross-out elements that are so often a part of children’s entertainment.

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