There must be a collective noun that the film world can up with for films, specifically sequels that should never been made. Whatever that word is Zombieland: Double Tap is it. This noun would not mean a film is bad or badly acted only that it is the sequel that did not need to be made.
The original Zombieland was a fun silly ride with four characters, thousands of zombies and Bill Murray. It was daft, thrilling and funny. So a sequel would probably be a good idea, the trouble is all of your cast are well-known and now even more well-known, scheduling conflicts arrive and then eleven years later we get the sequel. It’s too long a break, much like huge great novels with book after book in the series, you forget what you were reading in novel one, when you get to novel ten.
The actors have all aged, Woody Harrelson is fine, looking grizzled and like he has survived ten years in an apocalypse, Jesse Eisenberg is still playing the same nervous annoying character which is funny in small doses, only older and no more developed, Emma Stone looks like she has been on a starvation diet so that fits and Abigail Breslin is now a fully-grown woman. One set of people who clearly survived the zombification of Earth are dentists who specialise in teeth-whitening that is certain.
The story after a ten-year gap seems not to have moved the characters on, the still lounge about, but now in the White House, we are treated to a brief comic-bookathon of them ‘taking’ the White House which is fun and could have been a great lead into the film but from this point on we get bogged down. Nothing much happens in truth until we meet up with Madison, Zoey Deutch, who is fine as the annoying ‘valley girl’, her role given a little bit of growth but this character was a chance missed by the makers and eventually she seems to turn into comic wallpaper. Clearly created to give someone new for three of the heroes to bounce off during sections of the film, otherwise you have the same conflict amongst characters you had ten years ago which gets tired very quickly and even in slight story like this would make no narrative sense.
To be honest the whole film is a veritable forest of sign-posts showing script contrivances and writing that are only there to move the story in a certain direction. Nothing seemed natural to me.
The addition of extra characters, asides from zombies the original was a four-hander, could have added something to the mix and created different dynamics but in the end they looked shoe-horned in. The annoying millennials were funny but an easy and lazy target. The doppelgangers were done much better in Shaun of the Dead and a waste of Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch, the love interest from Woody Harrelson in Rosario Dawson was odd and again felt shoe-horned in for no other reason than we have to have love-interest for Woody.
There as some funny parts in Double Tap but nothing laugh out loud and the story, even as it was, could have been much better, the targets were there but missed. The overall look of the apocalypse, the artwork, screen effects and realisation was impressive but after ten years it feel we waited too long and in the end found out that like a real apocalypse nothing much would have changed in a decade.
Naming the various types of zombies was funny and almost definitely what most of us would do, although in the real situation most of us would be dead or a zombie of course. Time to bury the zombies in a deep hole. Much like the more serious zombie films, if you are making a film about the ‘living dead’ nowadays come up with a really good story an interesting and different take or just do not bother. Make something different, tell another story there are millions out there.
Zombieland: Double Tap is a funny film, just not in the way the makers intended.
Review by DeletedBlockedParent2020-04-30T17:04:17Z
There must be a collective noun that the film world can up with for films, specifically sequels that should never been made. Whatever that word is Zombieland: Double Tap is it. This noun would not mean a film is bad or badly acted only that it is the sequel that did not need to be made.
The original Zombieland was a fun silly ride with four characters, thousands of zombies and Bill Murray. It was daft, thrilling and funny. So a sequel would probably be a good idea, the trouble is all of your cast are well-known and now even more well-known, scheduling conflicts arrive and then eleven years later we get the sequel. It’s too long a break, much like huge great novels with book after book in the series, you forget what you were reading in novel one, when you get to novel ten.
The actors have all aged, Woody Harrelson is fine, looking grizzled and like he has survived ten years in an apocalypse, Jesse Eisenberg is still playing the same nervous annoying character which is funny in small doses, only older and no more developed, Emma Stone looks like she has been on a starvation diet so that fits and Abigail Breslin is now a fully-grown woman. One set of people who clearly survived the zombification of Earth are dentists who specialise in teeth-whitening that is certain.
The story after a ten-year gap seems not to have moved the characters on, the still lounge about, but now in the White House, we are treated to a brief comic-bookathon of them ‘taking’ the White House which is fun and could have been a great lead into the film but from this point on we get bogged down. Nothing much happens in truth until we meet up with Madison, Zoey Deutch, who is fine as the annoying ‘valley girl’, her role given a little bit of growth but this character was a chance missed by the makers and eventually she seems to turn into comic wallpaper. Clearly created to give someone new for three of the heroes to bounce off during sections of the film, otherwise you have the same conflict amongst characters you had ten years ago which gets tired very quickly and even in slight story like this would make no narrative sense.
To be honest the whole film is a veritable forest of sign-posts showing script contrivances and writing that are only there to move the story in a certain direction. Nothing seemed natural to me.
The addition of extra characters, asides from zombies the original was a four-hander, could have added something to the mix and created different dynamics but in the end they looked shoe-horned in. The annoying millennials were funny but an easy and lazy target. The doppelgangers were done much better in Shaun of the Dead and a waste of Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch, the love interest from Woody Harrelson in Rosario Dawson was odd and again felt shoe-horned in for no other reason than we have to have love-interest for Woody.
There as some funny parts in Double Tap but nothing laugh out loud and the story, even as it was, could have been much better, the targets were there but missed. The overall look of the apocalypse, the artwork, screen effects and realisation was impressive but after ten years it feel we waited too long and in the end found out that like a real apocalypse nothing much would have changed in a decade.
Naming the various types of zombies was funny and almost definitely what most of us would do, although in the real situation most of us would be dead or a zombie of course.
Time to bury the zombies in a deep hole. Much like the more serious zombie films, if you are making a film about the ‘living dead’ nowadays come up with a really good story an interesting and different take or just do not bother. Make something different, tell another story there are millions out there.
Zombieland: Double Tap is a funny film, just not in the way the makers intended.