Monsters and Zombies: A Tale of Two Movies
Saturday, June 22, 2013
It was the best of times for some, and the worst of times for others. Today, in the darkness of movie theaters, I watched Brad Pitt flee from zombies and Mike Wazowski flee from human children. The human race faced extinction, and famous monster heroes faced expulsion. Pixar Animation hit another home run, and the zombie apocalypse genre added a solid new entry to its historic ranks.
Today marked the third time I’ve seen two different movies in theaters in one day. Back in the winter of 2003, I saw Cold Mountain and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King back-to-back in the course of one epic but emotionally-draining afternoon, and then in the winter of 2009, I visited the theater once in the early afternoon, once at night, to see a pair of Oscar bait, history-based (ultimately overrated) sports dramas, Invictus and The Blind Side.
Today, it was the zombie apocalypse adaptation World War Z and the family-friendly prequel Monsters University
World War Z
Length: 116 minutes
Rated PG-13 for intense action violence and some gory/bloody content, language, and disturbing zombie images
My Grade: B
At the brisk, early morning time of 11 A.M., which might be the earliest starting time of any movie I’ve ever seen in theaters, I settled in for the big-screen adaptation of Max Brooks’ hit bestseller, World War Z. Directed by Oscar-nominee Marc Forster and starring the popular-as-ever Brad Pitt, Z comes into theaters riding its popular name and hoping for at least one big weekend payday thanks to the promise of portrayal of a zombie apocalypse.
Well, for starters, it tramples on the joking mood people always have when they consider where they would go, and what they would do, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, because it definitely fails to make such a cataclysmic event look like any fun. Like the book, it gives no real origin for the rabies virus that begins infecting people, sometimes “turning” them in as little as 12 seconds after being bitten. And we see the mass outbreak of the disease in downtown Philadelphia
Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former UN investigator who’s in morning traffic with his loving wife (Mireille Enos) and adorable daughters (Sterling Jerins and Abigail Hargrove) when they begin to see twitchy, snarling, weirdly-acrobatic people tackling bystanders and mauling them. Cars crash, people scream, zombies shriek and head-butt their way through car windows to get at the fresh homo sapien meat on the other side, and a sense of real, terrifying tension is set. Through a government contact (Fana Mokoena), Gerry and his family are escorted to safety aboard a quarantined aircraft carrier, but are only allowed to stay on the basis that Gerry agrees to help look for a cure.
His military-sanctioned journey takes him from the rainy wastelands of South Korea—where he learns any little sound can trigger an all-out assault from the undead—to the fortified city of Jerusalem, where a towering wall and strict military security seem to promise a sanctuary, to a high-tech science lab in Eastern Europe, where Gerry and a few other scientists brainstorm possible cures. All the while, the size of earth’s healthy population plummets and Gerry’s family loses hope of ever seeing him again.
World War Z is tremendously gripping—a few scenes where characters need to stay quiet to keep their presence unknown to the undead make you afraid to breathe too loudly—but all it really has to offer are the scenes of zombies overrunning the world. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, given that these large-scale scenes of the infected attacking the healthy were largely absent from the big-budget aftermath flick I Am Legend, and the savagely intense survival tale, 28 Days Later (not to mention the cute but enjoyably earnest Warm Bodies), so they’re real treats. The Philadelphia raid, the breaching of Jerusalem, and outbreak aboard an in-flight airplane prove arm-rest-clenching, electrifying sequences, and there are a few great moments late in the lab, but World War Z offers nothing more than that. Pitt, though no chameleon, has always proven a solid screen presence and an actor of considerable intensity, but Gerry is one of the least-compelling characters he’s ever played. His family is but a plot device. And regrettably, after all its impressive Earth-storming thunder, Z shudders immediately to a halt upon the discovery of a cure to the zombie virus. Then, as if afraid the audience will lose interest watching the de-zombiefication of earth, the movies hurries to its anticlimactic finish with an uninspired hodgepodge of voiceovers and clips of zombies being blown up. It’s funny, because this same “cleaning up” of a zombie-overrun earth was done to such uplifting effect in Warm Bodies a couple months ago.
Bottom Line: World War Z offers a compelling, edge-of-your-seat-tense experience with some fantastic spectacle, but it’s short on story and characterization, and ends meekly. I enjoyed watching it, but in a summer already featuring Superman, Iron Man and Khan, Z may disappear from the limelight quickly.
Length: 110 minutes
Rated G (contains some mildly scary moments)
My Grade: B+
I wanted to see World War Z, but I had a feeling I would enjoy Monsters University more. Boy, did I. The prequel to 2001’s Monsters, Inc.,University offers one of Pixar’s breeziest outings, lighter and funnier than some of the more somber installments. Of course, it didn’t hurt Up, Wall-E or Brave to really touch the heart and the tear ducts, but this new Monsters proves every bit as watchable.
Did you ever wonder how the mismatched pair of pint-sized, one-eyed Mike Wazowski (voice of Billy Crystal) and hulking, furry James P. Sullivan (voice of John Goodman) met? University answers that question by presenting them in their monster teens, with Mike arriving at the titular institution a dork full of excitement and dream-fulfillment, aiming for the stars, while Sully, the son of a famous scarer, swaggers in planning to get by on brawn and reputation. Both want to be scarers, which were identified in the earlier film as monsters who scare children for a living, making them scream so those screams can be recorded and then used to power their monster cities. Scarers are all the rage, but getting into the Scare program means winning the respect and approval of Dean Hardscrabble (voice of Helen Mirren), a famously scary figure who looks a cross between a Gothic dragon and a giant millipede.
The familiar college-movie tropes are in place right away. Mike is a book-devouring teacher’s pet, who has a fellow nerdy roommate (Randall Boggs, voiced by Steve Buscemi) and a lifelong dream of becoming a scarer, even though everyone claims he isn’t scary. Sully, meanwhile, impresses his teachers and peers with his bulk and his thunderous roars, and gains immediate admission to the top fraternity on campus. The two share a mutual ire almost immediately, and when an escalated squabble ends in the desecration of a sacred university artifact, the two are banished from the Scare program unless they can, together, lead a fraternity to victory in the campus-wide “Scare Games”. Of course, that fraternity is the lame Oozma Kappa, the fraternity answer to the Island of Misfit Toys
The voices are all charming and effective, the animation’s a delight (the university’s terrifying, tentacled librarian is a particular standout, with a group of demonic sorority girls a close second) and there’s a late real-life-scary bit that evokes comparisons to Insidious and Paranormal Activity, where things go bump in the night and move around seemingly of their own accord. The emotional arc is the same as it was in the first movie (Sully and Mike each have to swallow a plug of pride and admit they need each other to be effective; Sully, that he needs Mike’s brains and ingenuity, and Mike, that he needs Sully’s strength), but, like most of Pixar’s best, this is one G-rated movie adults and teens will enjoy just as much as the kids-if not more-and that’s not a bad thing (all the people in the audience I could hear howling were adults).
Bottom Line: Not quite in the upper echelon of Pixar’s output—which includes the likes of Up, Finding Nemo, Toy Story and Wall-E—Monsters University is nonetheless a worthy companion to the original and one of the summer’s most likeable and entertaining films.
World War Z (2013)
Directed by Marc Forster
Screenplay by Matthew Carnahan, Drew Goddard, and David Lindelof; Based on the novel by Max Brooks
Rated PG-13
Length: 116 minutes
Directed by Dan Scanlon
Written by Robert L. Baird, Daniel Gerson and Dan Scanlon
Rated G
Length: 110 minutes
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