Directed by:
Ruben FleischerCinematography:
Chung-hoon ChungComposer:
David SardyCast:
Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Zoey Deutch, Rosario Dawson, Avan Jogia, Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch, Bill Murray (more)VOD (4)
Plots(1)
After a fight between Columbus and Wichita creates a deep rift in the make-shift family that causes Little Rock to leave with a strange man, the group must band together to find Little Rock and mend the family ties. Facing new kinds of zombies along the way, the group are forced to adjust their strategies until they find an incredible new zombie hunter known only as Nevada. (Sony Pictures)
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Reviews (11)
Whereas some lenient reviews assert that the second Zombieland offers essentially the same thing as the first one, that is not entirely true. While watching the film, you repeatedly say to yourself that specific scenes and shots are a variation of something from the first film, whether that is slow-motion splatter shots or the characters pushing each other around. But that is merely just mechanical fan service and thus basically the exact opposite of the very essence of the first Zombieland, which became a sensation in its time because it came up with a fresh approach to zombie flicks and managed to transform them into clever entertainment by means of a detached view and genre reflection. The second film, on the other hand, is shocking in its failure to offer anything fresh or original. It is as if the returning filmmakers had suffered a severe case of dementia over the preceding decade and are thus merely repeating what they did last time. Furthermore, whereas the first film had a certain degree of causality and, above all, it managed to build a functional and coherent world, here everything falls to pieces. The result is an unwanted travesty in which the characters find themselves outside of their world, while the new reality lacks any cohesion (which is most apparent in the absolutely dysfunctional and interchangeable environment of the climax). Everything could almost be saved by claiming that this time the filmmakers came up with a brilliant meta concept which, following the example of typically insipid direct-to-video sequels, offers a deliberately cheaper and more shoddily made variation of the original hit, but nothing in the film indicates such a degree of detachmentand conceptuality.
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With this bunch (including the pink blonde), you wouldn’t be bored even if they just stood around talking at a bus stop. Even so, the screenwriters of the second Zombieland didn’t exactly overwork themselves. The film is a road movie with three stops where something happens just for a moment of amusement, not for moving some elaborate story forward, much less for enriching genre conventions. Even the imaginative pacifist smelting of weapons in Babylon was spoiled by the silly solution of the final problem with the zombie army. It’s okay for watching once, though.
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In terms of content, this a clearly bad film. Its schematic, weak and sloppy story about the journey of the characters from point A to point B serves only as a necessary link for a series of comedy sketches and action scenes with zombies, all with fluctuating levels of quality. The film of course copies the first Zombieland, but this time it's all much simpler, more straightforward, more predictable and, overall, somewhat worse in all respects. Moreover, after ten years, the main characters have degraded to annoying one-dimensional caricatures. The film is fully aware that they are unbearable, but rather than doing anything about it, it uses these aspects as a source of humour (and builds a panopticon around them of deliberately annoying and exaggerated, demented side characters consisting of personalized stereotypes, so that the main characters appear more sympathetic to the audience). The film is partly saved by a fairly entertaining level of comedy, and in places by the actors, who obviously enjoyed filming it, which the audience can see. Only every third to fourth joke works, but with the huge cadence of gags, it doesn't matter much.
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A complete sandbox of random episodes and situations spliced together with running jokes and quirky characters. It's horribly shot (the camera for the most part never goes beyond the foreground), poorly edited, and with incredibly lazy and cheap CGI (even the dead bodies by the roads are digitally added), but the whole thing is pulled off by the foursome of Harrelson, Stone, Breslin and Deutch (!!!) who are just a joy to watch as they shamelessly cow in front of the camera. Thankfully, the film doesn't irritate with confused episodicity, as it never once attempts any coherence throughout. It's very likely that with a different cast it would have been intolerable. Interestingly, the "geek" character of Jesse Eisenberg is the one who has least survived the decade-long outage, who with his neurotic pop culture references, is fit only to be thrown over the walls to be torn apart and eaten by the plebes from among Big Bang Theory fans.
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This movie plays it safe and other than the characters being older, don't expect much variation. In a way it's a sympathetic approach, but it would have been even more sympathetic to me if I hadn't found the last film to be an altogether entertaining but also contradictory spectacle that I just couldn't miss. The second Zombieland is better perhaps only in that the vast majority of the most rewarding humor this time rests on the shoulders of Woody Harrelson, who is simply brilliant, and newcomer Zoey Deutch, who wraps everyone around her finger with her endearing portrayal of a less than bright girl. It's the other characters' clashes with her way of "thinking" that entertained me the most (along with the final credits). Not the mashing of the undead with combines and the tired,obligatory finale, nor the hackneyed romance with its predictable conclusion, and certainly not the whole part with Luke Wilson, which was a few completely tone-deaf minutes and a bore to watch.
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