Warm Bodies
Director: Jonathan Levine
Actors: Teresa Palmer, Dave Franco, Annaleigh Tipton
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Running time: 97 minutes
So you've got a lead male character who is pale, undead, and still ridiculously handsome? Check. And then a lead female character who is alive and well except for the fact that she's suddenly a fan of necrophilia? Check. They fall in love, and he then has to defend her from other undead folk who want nothing more than to chow down on her flesh... and not in a good way. Yes, this is basically Twilight all over again.
R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie with motivational problems. He lives in an unspecified apocalypse where humans are an endangered species. One attack later, and R has tucked in to the brains of Perry (Dave Franco), thus giving him his memories. He also runs into Julie (Teresa Palmer), who happens to be Perry's newly ex'd girlfriend, as well as being the daughter of the leader of the human survivors (John Malkovich). Instead of eating her though, R saves her from his zombie buddies and hides her in the passenger jet that he lives in. From there, the two slowly begin to fall in love with each other, and that love begins to spread throughout the other zombies in the world, curing them of their undead-itis.
Compared to Twilight, Warm Bodies has a much better sense of humour and self-awareness, but unfortunately, it's still no less brain-dead. The rules of these zombies don't make much sense; zombies complain about only being able to shuffle slowly but then suddenly burst into a sprint, plus in one scene they can smell humans from hundreds of meters away but in the next don’t notice a human standing right next to them . What's more, there a huge plot holes all over the place.
Hoult is better as the cold-blooded R(omeo) when he's given no dialogue to stutter his way through, and Palmer's Julie(t) is basically Kristen Stewart's Bella given permission to smile. Malkovich, Franco, as well as Rob Corddry as R’s best friend and Analeigh Tipton as Julie's are all completely wasted.
Director Jonathan Levine last gave us the hugely heartfelt 50/50, but this time out has failed to achieve much more than a murmur.
