Sunday, February 17, 2013

Warm Bodies - Movie Review


Starring Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco and Analeigh Tipton.
Directed by Jonathan Levine.


★★★


The voice-over narration is by a witty fellow, but unfortunately that narrator is trapped in a zombie body who can only shuffle along and manage some moans and grunts.  His grunts get more strained when he meets a cute girl.  So ultimately this is a perfect metaphor for lovestruck teenhood.

R (Nicholas Hoult) is one of many zombies that came about a plague struck Earth eight years before whenever we are now.  He's called R because that's the only part of his original name he remembers. You may remember Hoult as Beast from X-Men: First Class. He's been in many other things, but his work as R is going to be the role where now I won't forget who Hoult is.  ("Who's Nicholas Hoult?" "The guy from Warm Bodies." "Oh yeah...")

Now underneath it all, yeah, it's a twist on the Twilight craze, where Romeo's a zombie instead of a vampire, but it's decidedly a comedy first, and it works. It also has less gore than your random Walking Dead episode.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Given the explosion in zombie culture and the avalanche of zombie movies, it was only a matter of time before a studio pitched the romantic possibilities. However, if this is what we get from the studios, well then I guess I can’t be that mad. Good review John.