Release Date: October 18, 2019
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, Emma Stone, Rosario Dawson, Zoey Deutch, Luke Wilson
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Spoilers: Low
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There are some movies that are really fun to write reviews for, either because they’re so transcendentally good and I feel the need to proselytize, or because they’re so bad that I find Marie-Kondo-like joy from banging out 600 words of euphoric criticism.
Then there are movies that fall somewhere in the middle, like Zombieland: Double Tap. These are movies that aren’t worth the word count. They don’t inspire enduring love, but they also don’t inspire seething hatred. Zombieland: Double Tap is just ‘meh.’ It’s uninspiring.
I say this as a big fan of the original Zombieland movie. I’d skip this one until it comes out on Netflix.
It’s not a bad movie- it gets some solid laughs, mostly from throwback references to the original film, but it ultimately suffers from a scattered plot and lack of deeper emotion. It’s a well-casted money-grab that doesn’t feel like a necessary continuation of the original story.
Zombieland: Double Tap follows the same characters from the original movie ten years, from when we last left them. Since then, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) has grown up and is chafing at her found family’s over-protectiveness. Little Rock runs away from home, leaving the rest of the gang to chase after her, meeting some fun, ditzy characters (Berkeley and Madison [played by the incomparable Zoey Deutch, everyone should watch The Politician on Netflix!]) and some equally fun doppelgängers (Flagstaff and Albuquerque) along the way. The movie culminates in a big zombie-battle face off that (predictably) reunites the family.
Surprisingly, the movie’s most worthwhile moments weren’t with the original cast – instead, it was the guest appearances by Thomas Middleditch and Deutch that lifted the film.
Unfortunately, the writing just wasn’t as good this time around, and there wasn’t a need to tell more of this story with its muddled plot.
This movie is a let-down in the same way as revisiting your childhood haunts. Things aren’t as big and fun and new and scary as you remembered. The world built in the first film was unique and funny and gorey and gross; sometimes, in this movie, there are glimpses that world is still there, but like revisiting most things years later, its just not as great as how I remembered.
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