I loved the movie Zombieland. I've seen it a handful of times, and it cemented my man-crush on Jesse Eisenberg. It's a funny movie that balances the absurd, the funny, and packs a nice moral without ever even approaching heavy-handed.
When I heard there was a TV show with no Eisenberg or Harrelson or Stone or Breslin, all stocked with actors I didn't know or didn't like, I wasn't so happy. I said it was going to be awful and that I wouldn't watch it.
The result is better than I expected, but not what the movie offered, and frankly, if you go into it expecting the movie again, you'll be disappointed.
The movie had some fun dialogue and a present but subtle point. The TV show is much better at slap-stick gags. It showed a commitment to the dialogue and the theme and the character development, but it was honestly boring. That part is not written nearly as well as the movie, and I strongly suspect that it won't get better over time.
The slapstick gags are funny though. While predictable, there were several times I laughed out loud, which is something I seldom do for slap-stick comedy, especially if I go into it promising myself to dislike it. I had some really nice chuckles, which I seldom get from TV shows.
While I understand that this was never going to be the original part II, there was one major change I seriously disliked. In the original, Tallahassee was insane, neurotic, but the smartest one of the whole bunch in his own twisted way. Columbus was the bumbling clueless one, and Tallahassee was the one who protected him from zombies and girls. In the TV show, Tallahassee has lost about 50 IQ points. He went from an insane but bright zombie killing machine to a guy who to quote the show "asks for price checks at a 99 cent store." They did a decent job at capturing everyone else's character, but they practically killed Tallahassee.
The original Zombieland starred four actors with a combined four Oscar nominations. The TV show stars four people that I had barely heard of. The believably is a little stretched, Wichita no longer looks like Emma Stone, and Eisenberg's narration is no longer as fast or clear as it used to be. The storyline isn't as well written or as well acted as it was before. But it's funny. It's a TV show, so you were never going to get Eisenberg back. You were never going to get Hollywood writers working on a draft for years at a time.
But it has some things right. In addition to some nice cheap laughs, it has the theme right. At the end of it all when the zombies get to us, what are you going to miss? It won't be TV, it won't be IMDb. It'll be people. As much as Wichita and the others don't want to hear it, the show keeps the family motif right, and Tallahassee still demonstrates that if life is worth living, it's worth living now. To quote the show, "If God sent you back to Earth five minutes, and those five minutes was right now, what would you do with it?" It's an important question that too many people never ask. They get up, go to a job they hate, eat food they dislike, come back to a family they resent, and spend their whole lives looking forward to the weekend, which always disappoints. And the show, like the movie, promises that there's more, and it's all around you right now. The TV show is probably heavier handed than this review while the movie was very beautifully subtle, but it's there. The TV show might be very different in form and delivery, but when it comes down to the point, it's the same in substance.
So the rating breakdown goes like this for people: A handful of zombie apocalypse nuts giving this a 10, a bunch of frustrated people who wanted more of the movie giving it a 4, and a few people in the middle who like it for what it is, not what it isn't.
