WARM BODIES

Warm Bodies (2013)

Grade: B+

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Cordrry, Analeigh Tipton, Dave Franco and John Malkovich

Premise: A potential cure for a worldwide zombie virus outbreak is discovered after one of the living dead develops genuine affection for a living, breathing human girl.

RATED PG-13 for thematic material including blood, gore, action violence, disturbing images, and some language

If you’ve gotten this far, I’m assuming you’ve read the title of the movie on which this review is centered, and you’ve read the premise (you’ve probably even seen the trailer). Are you thinking I’ve lost my mind yet? After all, I fancy myself a big, tough movie critic who thumbs his nose at Harry Potter and Hunger Games and Marvel Comics adaptations that make billions of dollars worldwide, and yet I’ve gone and given a favorable grade to a zombie/human romance that couldn’t more obviously be just the newest entrant in the ridiculous ‘Paranormal Romance’ sensation that’s sweeping the teen/young-adult world? It started with the vampire/human Twilight books and movies, but more big budget adaptations—such as the witch/human romance Beautiful Creatures due in March—are on the way. I admit I’m on a high because I just saw Warm Bodies and my emotions are in gear, and the first time I hear someone sensible diss the movie I’ll probably scramble to make excuses for such a good rating…

But, dag gone it, I enjoyed the heck out of myself watching Director Jonathan Levine’s adaptation of Isaac Marion’s novel. I watch a lot of movies (some for entertainment, some so I’m in the know for the upcoming Oscar race, some because I get invited to a time out with friends, and some because I just need some background noise in my apartment), and, lately, I’d been finding it a rather joyless process. After all, I watch movies regularly, and I was finding myself increasingly and frustratingly unimpressed by one hoity-toity Movie-of-the-Week title after another (Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained). I’ve been getting a little jaded…probably because lately I’ve been watching a lot of really long, really dark movies full of pain and death (The aforementioned three, plus Skyfall and Les Miserables). Thus, the cute, quick little Warm Bodies worked on me like a magic trick, making me laugh, gasp, swoon, move to the edge of my seat, and, basically, really enjoy going to the movies again. That’s right: a teen girls' zombie/human rom-com became a treat.

Plot: In the not-too-distant future, humanity has nearly been wiped out by a zombie virus (the origins of which are unexplained). In one large American city, a population of survivors lives surrounded by a massive wall, which they had to speedily erect to keep out disease-ridden zombies, some of which are essentially walking skeletons. One such zombie (Nicholas Hoult) can’t remember his own name but is a little more self-aware than others. He wishes to feel, wishes to communicate, wishes to have something to do other than just walk around with other people who can’t feel or communicate. However, it turns out, pretty much the only way this zombie can feel is by eating a person’s brains, wherein he’s able to see and experience their memories. When a small group of living humans ventures beyond the wall to try to recover medical supplies from a lab, zombies attack, our “hero” gets a hold of a guy’s brains, and boom—suddenly he’s neck-deep in lovey-dovey land with a gorgeous, soulful blonde (Teresa Palmer). The girl, Julie, the daughter of the local militia maven (John Malkovich) happens to be in the same company as the man who was just devoured, and the zombie, gob-smacked by emotion and desire, can’t find it in himself to kill and eat her. Instead, finding himself really motivated for the first time in ages, he hides her inside his sanctuary, an airplane he has slowly but steadily stocked with things he finds valuable, like records and sports trophies and magazines. Though at first understandably terrified and repulsed, Julie slowly begins to realize that R (as she comes to refer to him), as well as some of the other zombies, aren’t quite the unrelenting killing machines expected. R even saves Julie when she tries to run for it and ends up cornered by a pack of the more mindless beings. Though she’s still biased and a little sickened, Julie sees enough as R escorts her back to safety that she begins to believe the infected remnants of the human race may not be beyond all hope. The trouble will be getting her fellow human survivors to see it, too.

What Doesn’t Work?

Okay, okay, okay, so, some sense here: you have to leave disbelief at the door when you go to see Warm Bodies. Why didn’t the zombies’ eating of other people’s brains trigger in them feelings of love for the individuals those people loved and, thus, stop the outbreak as it was happening? Why can R form the occasional word when most of his fellows can’t manage even that? What are the chances-really?-that the surviving humans would ever let any of the walking undead stand long enough to try and observe that they’re not the mindless killing machines they expected? Why are cutesy teenage girls like Julie and Nora (Analeigh Tipton) among those sent into the dead zone/kill zone beyond the wall? There’s plenty that set my movie critic sense tingling as I watched Warm Bodies, and is tempting me to give the movie a lower grade, no matter how many warm-fuzzies I'm experiencing.

What Works?

I guess I’m just choosing to ignore those questions. Why can’t I do that with all movies I watch? Probably because I had such a good time watching this movie. I mean, despite the fact that I saw right through this formulaic undead/human romance aimed at teen girls, I found Warm Bodies about a hundred times funnier than any of the Twilight movies (and not because I was laughing at it). Despite the fact that Nicholas Hoult essentially wears one pale, bug-eyed, crusty-lipped expression for the entire film, he’s somehow almost immediately a more interesting and engaging undead protagonist than Robert Pattison ever managed to be. Likewise, Teresa Palmer--who actually does suggest a blond poor man's Kristen Stewart--proves more engaging than the ever-sullen actress who played Bella Swan because she’s not trying nearly as hard to seem like a klutzy, nothing-special, unattractive girl (she’s not unattractive, by the way). The real kicker that makes Warm Bodies better than Twilight and such is that the supernatural/paranormal/undead being with all the powers and quirks is the Main Character, rather than a supporter to a regular old human protagonist.

And, of course, though it has a lot of moments that need to work for the movie to function (the development of believable chemistry between its leads, for instance, and having genuinely harrowing shootouts and zombie/human altercations), Warm Bodies doesn’t take itself anywhere near as seriously as Twilight did. The biggest problem with the Twilight films is that they wouldn’t know humor if it bit them upside the leg—those films revolved around their ridiculously-stuffy and uninvolving attempts to develop to-die-for romantic chemistry. Warm Bodies is bookended with wall-to-wall action and rife with humor (there’s even a full-on LOL teenage girl scene that manages to come across as less ridiculous than it could). Again, Warm Bodies just engaged me. Even though I objectively knew it was a silly teenage girl’s movie, I wanted the protagonists to survive and be together, I wanted humanity to find peace, I felt the suspense of not knowing how terrifying fights and chases were going to turn out, and I felt good when I walked out of the theater. You might forget Warm Bodies a couple days after you see it, and the ending might be a little treacly; you might also feel a little miffed that you spent $10 on an hour-and-a-half girly fairy tale, but, I gotta tell ya, as an entertainment, it beats the hell out of two-and-a-half hour movies that bore you for two-thirds of their running time and make you miserable for the other third.

Content

Children and some squeamish adults will certainly find things to cringe at, given that our “hero” and his mates enjoy killing people and eating brains--at least they don't usually do it right in front of the camera, right? Warm Bodies is not unnecessarily gory, and though the movie’s tense, really sinister, terrifying moments are few. There's also the odd four-letter word to spice up the low-key dialogue (some of these curses are actually croaked by zombies). And, for the record, other than one brief shot of Teresa Palmer stripping down to her undergarments (seen from behind), there is nothing particularly suggestive or edgy in a sensual way. The last two Twilight: Breaking Dawn films were far more rambunctious.

Bottom Line (I Promise): It’s no Oscar-winner, and I’ll probably feel appalled some time in the future that I gave this movie such a good rating, but I was legitimately entertained by Warm Bodies, a short, cute movie lacking grandiose ambition but perfect for an engaging time at the movies.

Warm Bodies (2013)

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Based on the novel by Isaac Marion

Rated PG-13

Length: 97 minutes