Zombieland (2009)

"Zombieland" has moments of humor as good as anything I've seen in the last year or so. From a dryly-delivered voice-over narration by the underrated "my name is not Michael Cera" Jesse Eisenberg to the film's great highlight and centerpiece involving Bill Murray, I laughed hard.

Sadly, "Zombieland" falls apart at the end. It's tone, pitch perfect for 65 of its fast 85 minutes, changes. It's climactic scene is, well, anti-climactic. It's a shame, too, because the film has a lot going for it.

The plot of "Zombieland" centers around a small, disjointed band of road warriors at a time when the undead so heavily outnumber the living that the living refer to each other by the cities they come from, and basically now, represent entirely. We begin by meeting Columbus (Eisenberg), who provides us with all of the background we need -- a tutorial on how one survives in a world filled zombies. It is the best chunk of comic, meta-horror parody since "Scream."

While on the run, Columbus meets up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson playing, basically, the same thing as always -- though here it's perfect) and two girls, played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin (who is quite different from how we remember her), who trick the guys into situations that force the four of them to work as a team.

To give away much more of the plot would be to give away too many of the jokes, but I will say that one of the funniest bits in the film centers around Tallahassee's craving for a Twinkie, a snack so preservative-filled that it could, conceivably, survive the extinction of most of mankind.

"Zombieland" has some gore, as it should. It is, after all, a zombie flick, albeit a comic one. The odd couple pairing of Eisenberg and Harrelson works in the tradition of any buddy road film or mis-matched cop partners movie.

As I mentioned before, a final showdown between the humans and the zombies at an amusement park went foul for me. The jokes weren't sustained and the tone chained. It was, in my mind, a failed ending. But not so bad an ending that you shouldn't see what has got to be, when it's all over, one of the funniest movies this year.

3.0 out of 4