Kill your stepfather, grab your girlfriend, hide in the local pub and have yourself a pint while you wait for a zombie outbreak to blow over — a perfect plan if there ever was one.
Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright bring the dark comedy “Shaun of the Dead” to the States to shove a little bit of British humor into a classic film genre: the zombie movie. Pegg plays Shaun, a thirtysomething chap infected with a severe case of emotional ineptitude and chronic tedium — though he’s clueless to the despair of his predicament. But when his girlfriend, played by Kate Ashfield, finally dumps him, and his inferior co-workers treat him like trash, he realizes that his life has reached the ultimate low.
That is, until the entire north side of London breaks out with a vicious case of flesh-eating zombie mania. Suddenly Shaun is forced to take initiative in a plan for survival in this strangely funny film.
“Shaun of the Dead” may be just a zombie film spoof, but its satisfying intelligence and straight-faced wit take the unnecessary vulgarity out of the film and replace it with great hilarity. It has the campy appeal of a John Waters film and the biting, dry humor of Monty Python yet at the same time perks up horror fans with a few very gory details. It’s incredibly cheesy but incredibly gratifying at the same time.
“Shaun” heightens its humor through its excellent British cast. Nick Frost plays Ed — the lazy slob friend — with such superb detail that the plot of the film would go bland otherwise. Supporting actors Dylan Moran, Lucy David and Penelope Wilton each add an extra comical element to the film as the up-tight friends and painfully oblivious “mum,” respectively. Pegg joins the team as the main character sealing the clever juices into the film’s plot with his purposefully nonchalant and unaware humor.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a perfect film, and the conclusion of the film is far from ideal. What could have been a surprising twist ends up pulling the film into a rushed effort to finish. Perhaps writers Pegg and Wright felt the bulk of their film was already so stuffed with quality that a little bit of a lame ending wouldn’t hurt anyone — who knows? Either way, the ending of “Shaun” does not suck enough to drag the coolness of the film into the toilet and can be forgiven.
If you’re looking for a good, hearty comedy that doesn’t run dry on punch-line jokes and carries a fun, trite storyline, “Shaun of the Dead” is the perfect film. It’s got the humor, the romance (sort of), the quirky details and some gloriously gory, stomach-churning zombie ass-kicking.
