Product Placement
You could say that I'm familiar with Romero's work.

It's entirely possibly that you could argue that I have 'watched' a 'lot' of 'movies' with 'zombies' in them.

If you catch my drift, nudge nudge wink wink.

of course Romero would be proud of the zombies/infected.
No offense intended, but you don't know Romero very well do ye? ^_^
He's been pretty adamant on how zombies should move based on some pretty common sense stuff like rigor mortis and atrophied muscles. He hated the way zombies were portrayed in that crappy remake of his film Dawn of the Dead, and he would hate these zombies with equal vigor. "Fast and agile" comPLETEly misses the point of a good zombie film. The screaming harpies in this movie hardly qualify as zombies. They might as well have had rabies actually. There are other monsters (ghouls for instance) that fit the niche that they're trying to put zombies into, making the zombies the hare rather than the tortoise really kinda makes them pointless.

Anyway, saw this at a drive in this weekend. After all you guys hyping it I was really looking forward to it...

I like dark humor, so I loved Shaun of the Dead. People kept mentioning that movie in this thread, so I was expecting something like it, and it simply wasn't. No comparison guys, these are two completely different films with one common thread: zombie comedy. And even that is pretty strained since there's no actual zombies in this movie, just screeching ghouls, in swarms of up to 20! For a zombie movie, there isn't an awful lot of zombies in it. There's several long stretches of just the characters, and I really couldn't stand the characters.
There was no mordant humor in this movie at all, just really predictable and unsubtle humor really. Not saying it was unfunny, but I've just seen it all before. A lot of it was just trying too hard for my tastes.
I see some of you say that it's more effective at being a comedy then SOTD was, but gauging reactions here I'd bet it's because American humor appeals to you more than British [tvtropes.org] humor, which is a little more subtle. Zombieland is chock full of schmaltzy feel-good scenes to ease the tension where Shaun keeps things strictly in black comedy [tvtropes.org].

I just couldn't stand the collective stupidity of the main characters. How are these ammo-wasting fools "survivors?" And that's just the tip of the iceberg of stupid things they do that should have gotten them killed. The whole end of the movie was just rife with wasted potential to begin with. I don't know why people would question the things that SOTD does for the sake of a joke, yet forgive a laundry list of incredibly stupid things that Zombieland does for a joke's sake. At least Shaun was consistent with the jokes it set up. Columbus letting us know about his IBS was completely pointless when it never becomes a problem later on, yet the clown thing (sort of) does.(Gawd I'm so sick of the "I'm scared of clowns!" thing, that's so old and cliche by now) While I'm glad they didn't annoy us with scatological humor in this regard, I feel like they dropped that in for only one joke (an allegory which was actually kinda clever) and then suddenly it goes away when the love interest shows up. Look at this [en.wikipedia.org]and tell me this wouldn't be a constant problem for the character, especially during those long car rides.

I didn't hate it, but needless to say it was a real letdown for me.

If it gets made into a tv series like they originally intended however, I'll watch it. I'd be a lot more forgiving of the things in the movie that bothered me if it was formatted differently. "Zombie Kill of the Week" would certainly make more sense that way too.

You know, I'm glad to see a difference of opinion in this thread, Amelius. And you back up your opinion pretty well. You're right that it's not quite fitting to make Shaunn of the Dead comparisons, but I think a big source of your dissatisfaction with Zombieland is because you continue to do so. Enjoyment of the movie hinges largely on the type of humor you enjoy, and expecting British humor in Zombieland would almost certainly lead to disappointment.

Not to say that I entirely disagree with you, though. It really was a predictable movie. But I went in with NO expectations and for me that payed off. Expectations can kill a movie.

I'm actually an outsider to the whole zombie movie thing. I haven't seen some of the classics. I didn't think there were rules and conventions to follow... I sort of thought that because zombies don't actually exist, they were a little more open to interpretation, just like how popular culture is redefining (and ruining) vampires. But I think the zombies in Zombieland work because they were explained as people with a variant of mad cow's disease, not the undead themselves.

Thanks Hawk, I appreciate that!

Well, I do admit that expecting a little black humor was setting myself up for disappointment, it also didn't help things that I'd buried my pet ferret the same day and needed a pick-me-up (not to mention that I had a pounding headache and spent the car ride home with my head out the window in fear that I may vomit, rough week all things considered) so stuff I would have chuckled at in usual circumstances only got an eye-roll from me. Tallahassee was sort of a bundle of macho Chuck Norris jokes and Columbus's George Micheal impressions were getting on my nerves, but they were tolerable...I just plain hated the females though.
I saw it as a double-feature with District 9, and I laughed more at that (at things that weren't intended to be funny no less) though I did find a few moments funny in Zombieland. Hitting the zombie with the car door for instance was funny to me, the joke they stole from Family Guy in the mansion, not so much. The whole "afraid of clowns" thing really put a nail on the coffin for me though. Plus a few scenes played out exactly as I've seen them in other places, particularly with when the girls first showed up. Hating the characters definitely had more to do with my opinion of the movie than the humor itself though. And I felt they lingered a bit too much on certain scenes that weren't particularly funny or interesting (like watching Tal bow and scrape to secret celebrity for 3 minutes)

Totally agree with you that expectations kill a movie, I was just hoping it might exceed them to some degree. I've enjoyed some pretty bad movies in the past.
It's not an awful movie by any means, it just spent a lot of time on things I didn't care about like driving montages and breaking stuff when I was expecting a lot of zombie hurting. The bad thing is I kept having questions like "who is running the power plants that they still have electricity?" or "why didn't the zombie eat him while he was asleep?" and when you can't find yourself willing to invoke the MST3K mantra,(it's just a show/movie) there's trouble.

While having a zombie comedy that doesn't rely on gallows humor is certainly a unique take, I just wasn't that into the brand of comedy it happened to be.

You know, I'm starting to agree with you more and more on the movie... I had some very similar hangups. I also feel like the clown phobia is overplayed. Who DOESN'T hate clowns these days? I also couldn't shake thoughts of the power plants and how they were still running.

Amelius
Tallahassee was sort of a bundle of macho Chuck Norris jokes and Columbus's George Micheal impressions were getting on my nerves, but they were tolerable...I just plain hated the females though.

I hated the girls too. I felt like they deserved to die because of the complete lack of humanity they showed to the two men. They stranded them, and a Twinkie doesn't make up for that. I suppose the ending indicates that they would redeem themselves and be a "family", but until then I couldn't understand why either of the guys felt like helping them.

I can remember the whole time they were saying "we're going to funland!" that there wouldn't be any power since nobody would be operating the power plants. Weird how we all get those little niggles eh? I also laughed at the sheer stupidity that set up the final scenes, such as the ditching of the SUV and the strapping into the Megadrop ride. Not to mention the little girls sudden fluxuations in her ability to aim in a straight line. (Can hit an electrical box from up there but not a Zombie right below you?) And how the hell did they get on and off the Pirate ship? There was nobody operating it!

Nitpicking aside, as I said before it's a watchable movie. But I like criticising reality in films and there was a fair amount to criticise here. (Bill Murray dresses as a zombie and lies around his house alone with the door unlocked? Okay then.) SotD can't really be compared to this film, theres really not alot of similarities outside the Z word.

I can understand your hang ups Amelius, as I had some to. Like why would you pick the biggest SUV's to drive, when there probably isn't all that much fuel to go around.

But I just took it for what it was, an over the top zombie parody. I think sometimes we can all be a bit nerdlike and start over analyzing things too much. Over analyzing fictional creatures nonetheless. :)

But it was more of a character driven story, which I think most zombie tales should be. It's not like you can give the zombies all that much personality. But if you don't like those characters, then yeah you probably won't enjoy the film all that much.

In regards to the power issue. I was watching some show on the history channel "Life after people." and I think they said that power could still remain for a few weeks afterwards. It was a long time ago when I watched that, so my memory is a bit sketchy on that.

zaymac
It's not like you can give the zombies all that much personality.

Try telling him that.

I loved Zombieland, it's amongst the best zombie films I've seen in a long time.

Hawk
There will come a time very soon where we're all sick of games and movies about zombies. I'm glad I watched this movie before then.

I bet that's what they said about vampires.

...Oh God, that means one day we'll have a human on zombie romance novel.

Atom Apple

Hawk
There will come a time very soon where we're all sick of games and movies about zombies. I'm glad I watched this movie before then.

I bet that's what they said about vampires.

...Oh God, that means one day we'll have a human on zombie romance novel.

*Shudders*

Atom Apple
...Oh God, that means one day we'll have a human on zombie romance novel.

I think there already are some, actually...