Warm Bodies

Warm Bodies, the new film by director Jonathan Levine is not just absolutely hilarious, but also incredibly timely on all fronts. It had me literally laughing out loud at times, thankfully the rest of the theater was laughing along, so I wasn't really disturbing anyone. I highly recommend Warm Bodies and I give it three and a half buckets of Killer Korn.





Seriously, I needed something to wash the taste of Broken City from my mouth and wipe it from my mind. Thankfully there was Warm Bodies coming around the corner. When I saw this trailer, I couldn't wait to see this movie and let me tell you, BEST ZOMBIE FILM EVER! Yes, I know that's really high praise when you think of the hordes of zombie films that have been made throughout time, but unlike any of those, this zombie film has a timely moral at its center. Adapted from the book by Isaac Marion, who also wrote the screenplay with Jonathan Levine, Warm Bodies takes place at the end of the world as we know it, yeah just like every other zombie apocalypse film, except this time the focus is on the zombies and on one zombie in particular. His name is R who is played by the About a Boy star Nicholas Hoult. We follow R as he goes about his day while living in the airport and the voice over narration is hilarious. He lives in a plane, has a great vinyl record collection, and he's basically a hoarder.

You meet R's best friend and fellow zombie, M who is played by the charming Rob Corddry, and you can't help but laugh at their interactions. One day, R and M are hanging out at the airport bar and they're hungry so they put a pack together and go hunting for food. At the same time, a band of what you would think were well trained, well armed humans are outside of the walls scavenging for medical supplies. Part of the pack of humans is Julie, played by Teresa Palmer, Nora who's played by the odd but cute Analeigh Tipton, and Perry, Julie's ex who's played by David Franco (and yes before you ask, he is the younger brother of actor James Franco). The pack of humans get attacked when R and company smell them. During the fight, R sees Julie and it's love at first sight for him and all the world is lovely, until he's shot by Perry, which is a bad move. Julie runs out of ammo and is basically a sitting meal for the zombies, but R saves her and brings her back to his plane at the zombie infested airport.

His internal dialogue is spot on funny as R comes across as a love struck teenager with company in his room. Julie of course is freaking out but she slowly begins to realize that R has her best interests at heart, as he does everything he can to not be creepy. Looking for Julie is her father Grigio, played with no humor at all by the great John Malkovich. Grigio is the head man in charge of the humans fight to stay alive which has driven a wedge between him and his daughter. When Julie and R get separated and she's safely back behind the wall, she finds herself missing her zombie boyfriend and R, armed with a Polaroid of Julie misses her just as much. The two of them, their connection has started something within the zombie community that has reawakened them, its sparked their humanity and that's the moral of this story.

There's a scene where R is walking through the airport and longs for some kind of connection. He wonders what it was like back in the day before the plague hit when people could connect with each other, spend time together, and just enjoy one anothers company. The image around him flashes back to a time when the airport was full of travelers and it shows no one connecting. There was no human contact of any kind because everyone was either on their phones, texting, reading a text, staring at their laptops or tablets. Basically the time R longs for never really existed, but that connection makes a comeback thanks to him and Julie. With no Internet, no cell phones, or other devices that individualizes us, all we can do is connect with one another. In fact, we are forced to in order to survive.

Now I have been a fan of Jonathan Levine's since his really cool 2008 film, The Wackness (which I highly recommend). He nailed it then and he's done it again. Warm Bodies is a really good film, a sort of zom-rom-com if you will (I think I should copyright that phrase) with a message that would should put down the phones and the laptops/tablets, back away from the computers and turn off the ipods every now and then and just enjoy one another while we still can, before death or the end of the world happens. Check out Warm Bodies for sure, you will not be sorry and I will see you at the theater!