WARM BODIES Zombies and Twilight—a combination no one asked for!
WARM BODIES, you're 100 percent right. After watching so many sparkly, aloof vampires do their pathetic wooing, zombies really do make the perfect boyfriends. They want you for your body AND your brain and they're perfectly willing to disembowel your ex-boyfriend. Sure they have some skin problems, but who doesn't?!
Re-imagining Romeo and Juliet, Warm Bodies is the tale of an unusual zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult) who longs for the old days before the apocalypse. Camped out in his sweet airplane at the airport, he shambles the concourse, awkwardly hangs out with his buddy M (Rob Corddry), and makes wry commentary via voiceover about his sorry state. On an outing for human flesh, R encounters the blonde beauty Julie (Teresa Palmer)—but she's from the other side of the tracks, as in she's a living breathing girl whose father is the head of the militant human survivors. R eats her ex-boyfriend's brain, which endows the zombie heartthrob with some humanistic mojo and saves her from the ravaging zombie horde.
Back at his pad they spend countless hours listening to his retro record collection and lounging around his bedroom (I told you he was boyfriend material). But their burgeoning zombie/human love hits a snag when Julie learns he ate her former love and their families just don't get along. You know, cue the balcony scene and all that.
It's way more charming and funny and clever than it needs to be. Like the scene where Julie and her nurse buddy give R a makeover so he can move freely through the human territory: Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" blares and R's turnaround reveal shows him slathered in blush and lipstick, as if Julia Roberts and Legend-era Tom Cruise had a make-up baby. It's pretty damned funny. Warm Bodies has a lot of unexpectedly amusing moments, buffered with strong performances by Corddry and John Malkovich as Julie's father, Colonel Pinot Grigio (or something... the Capulets were into vino, right?). In a world where supernatural boyfriends tend to be mopey and bland, Warm Bodies is a treat.
2013 | 98 minutes | Rated PG-13
Director: Jonathan Levine
Producer: Bruna Papandrea, David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, Laurie Webb, Cori Stern and Nicolas Stern
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Analeigh Tipton, Cory Hardrict, Daniel Rindress-Kay, Vincent Leclerc, Clifford LeDuc-Vaillancourt, Billie Calmeau, Adam Driscoll, Chris Cavener, Jonathan Dubsky and Alec Bourgeois
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