Shaun of the Dead (2004)

★½
When the Italian rip-offs of Dawn of the Dead littered the marketplace in the late '70s and early '80s, they took the basic premise of George Romero's masterpiece and added more gore while stripping away any sense of cohesion from the story; their plots often collapsed like a demolished building. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have done the same thing. Shaun of the Dead is a parody of Romero's zombie films, and it's an ineffective one. The movie tries to be funny by telegraphing most of its funny scenes, without letting the humor come naturally. It's like the guy in high school who came up to you and announced that he had a joke to tell, and he's going to tell you whether you want to hear it or not.

Simon Pegg plays Shaun, a slacker living in London and bored by his day-to-day routines. He has a girlfriend who doesn't like him, a slob for a roommate, a prick for a step-father and a dead-end job selling appliances. The first act is dominated by background characters who wander around aimlessly or who have blank stares on their faces. The movie's message isn't subtle; these people are basically zombies already. Thanks for making that clear to me guys.

A satellite burns up in the atmosphere over Great Britain, unleashing some kind of plague on the island, bringing the dead back to life with a hunger for human flesh. Shaun and his roommate Ed (Nick Frost) fight off the initial zombie invasion before getting in their car to rescue Shaun's girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), his mum and a few friends. Their plan is to barricade themselves inside a local pub to wait for help.

Pegg and co-writer Edgar Wright derive most of their jokes from zombie behavior and how the living react to them. They must be admirers of Monty Python, because the movie's humor is reminiscent of the overrated comedy troupe's style, and that is the kiss of death for this effort. The characters talk simply to set up a joke, to make sure we get it before the script delivers it. Watch how Shaun and Ed look through their record collection, trying to determine which ones to use as Frisbees to attack the ghouls. They have to comment on which records are worth destroying and which ones should be preserved. (They parted with the Batman soundtrack, for example.) Two undead creatures walk towards them just slow enough so that we can hear the dialogue and understand what is supposed to be funny about this.

Have you ever taken a toy apart to see how it worked? Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright do it for you. Like Monty Python, they don't have the confidence that you'll get the joke, so they have to spell it out for you. That's why the action will stop suddenly to set up a comedic scene. Just watch when the zombies finally break into the pub. Shaun and his buddies try to fight them off, but when they have to recite humorous dialogue to each other, the zombies stop in their tracks and just wave their arms around until everyone is done talking. It's this kind of textbook construction of a scene that irritates me.

For gore hounds, the movie delivers the goods. There is a surprising amount of graphic violence that not even 28 Days Later... had the nerve to show. The fact that this is a comedy actually allowed the film to slip through the M.P.A.A. with an R rating; it's too absurd to be grossed out by it. Props should be given, however, to a neat disemboweling scene that is nearly the equal to Captain Rhodes' death scene in Day of the Dead.

There are a few funny references to George Romero's films. If you've seen Dawn of the Dead as many times as I have, then you'll recognize the music in one scene. Shaun's mum is named Barbara, so Night of the Living Dead's most famous quote will chime in somewhere, but these small references don't save the movie from failure. Congratulations to the makers of Shaun of the Dead, because now we know what to expect from graduates of the Monty Python School of Film.

© 2004 Silver Screen Reviews