Zombieland: Double Tap: Film Review

Not a Home-run but a Solid Three Base Hit

Rating: 3½ out of 4 stars

CAST:

Credited cast:

Zoey Deutch … Madison

Abigail Breslin … Little Rock

Emma Stone … Wichita

Woody Harrelson … Tallahassee

Jesse Eisenberg … Columbus

Rosario Dawson … Nevada

Bill Murray … Bill Murray

If you want to just clear your mind of the constant onslaught of the Democrats revving up impeachment hearings for the current sitting president or having to deal with Hong Kong protesting or what’s going on in Turkey, I recommend you going to see Zombieland: Double Tap. This is the overdue sequel to the original film, Zombieland. The original stars, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin, all return to reprise their role and they didn’t lose a step in picking up where these characters left off. The plot generally stays the same but this time around we get some new characters and some new lingo like “Murraying”, more on that later. Of course, you know this film is going to be a hoot when the Columbia Pictures Torch lady uses said torch to beat off some invading zombies during the credit roll.

In this particular venue, the film picks up with Eisenberg giving us a narration. Jessie’s narrations aren’t particularly pleasant to the ears. I would have preferred Emma’s or Abigail to do the voice-over narrations. This, for me, was the only thing that made this journey a bump in the road. Putting that aside, we forge ahead. In the narration, plot points are established and one of them is that there is a new apex zombie that has evolved. It’s harder to kill. You can’t just shoot it in the head and think you’re done. No, you have to shoot it twice in the head, double-tap, hence, the leading title to the movie. This is established early on in the film but it’s not the leading narrative.

The leading narrative is the relationships of the four lead characters. They’ve been together for a while now and being together has it’s growing pains mainly for the women in this collective. One, Little Rock, wants to be dating but her pick of candidates only wants to eat her brain and they are dead. The other, Wichita, feels the weight of being in a long term relationship with someone with an eccentric personality and who is, let’s whisper it, a nerd, not that there is anything wrong with that. Tallahassee is the father/Uncle/Big Brother figure of the bunch but he’s no Ward Cleaver by any stretch of the imagination. There is a sense of respect given to him within the group. They trust his decision with their lives.

Little Rock and Wichita take off after Wichita turns down an offer of marriage from Columbus. And Little Rock takes off from Wichita after some hippy guy, Berkeley, shows up on the road and persuades her to go with him to his commune.

This film doesn’t take itself seriously at all when you saw the Torch Lady swinging for the fences at the beginning. After all, everybody is named after a U.S. city in this sequel and the tongue is firmly planted in that cheek. You’d think that they were some sort of band of covert spies with those names. That is what makes this film so fun. Each new character that gets introduced along the way has a city or state name. There is Madison, Berkeley, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, and Nevada played respectively by Zoey Deutch, Avan Jogie, Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch, and Rosario Dawson. Each brings its own set of misadventure with them that doesn’t bog down the premise. There is no perfect person in this bunch, no Reys or Captain Marvels or Mary Sues, just your slightly off-centered and just slightly embarrassing people filled with farts.

The third act builds up to a nice action sequence that really shines with that sense of dread and anticipation as the showdown with a contingent of apex zombies make their attack on Berkeley’s hippy compound. If it wasn’t for the fact that Little Rock was there, you’d want the zombies to make a meal out of this group. But since our protagonists are in the line of chomping, we want to root for the good guys. There is plenty of action leading up to this including a battle between Albuquerque and Flagstaff that was pretty intense. Nobody should take this movie as seriously as some SJW critics took to Joker with the sort of prejudicial maliciousness unfairly heaped upon it. Zombieland: Double Tap is straight-up slapstick and cartoon violence. Even when Flagstaff and Albuquerque are turned into zombies, that is done with humor. Zoey Deutch is good in the role of Madison as this ditsy survivor who becomes a love interest for Columbus and a thorn in the side for Wichita. That dynamic was done in such a good way that it was refreshing to see and without the usual tropes that come with a three-way relationship. There is no hidden agenda, inter-sectionalism, identity politics, nothing that would lend itself to any sort of controversy. Just go in for the 1 hour and 39 minutes and just let go. The last scene of the movie will make you smile is a flashback scene with Bill Murray and NBC weatherman, Al Roker, it’s just stupid fun. Roker and Murray have become this comedic duo in another reality but who is the straight man? “Murraying” by the way, is when you mistakenly kill someone when you think they are a zombie. Poor Bill Murray.