Me and My Mates vs. The Zombie Apocalypse

When I saw this DVD for sale I was hoping for a worthy zombie comedy along the lines of Shaun of the Dead but while there are good comedy moments, most of the humour failed to hit the mark. The plot was a simple one: a group of mates are holed up in a telephone exchange while the zombies are surrounding the building. The banter keeps flowing with the characters discussing the usual Aussie subjects of cricket and beer. In typical Aussie style, they even managed to include a couple of scantily clad women, one of them topless. Discussing the fate of their friend's wife was a good moment and so was the rooftop firework scene but this latter scene looked too similar to the Roadrunner cartoons. The real let-down was the timing of some of the action: some of the zombies took ages to shamble a few yards but if this was meant to be the joke then it failed. Generally, I like Aussie films, both comedy and drama but not this one.

This is a boring, terribly written, poorly executed, cheaply shot, amateurish production. Even for a deliberately stupid zombie comedy "Shaun of the Dead" knockoff, this movie is pitiful. The acting is horrifyingly bad. The jokes are terrible. The story is mind-numbing and stupid. There is nothing good about this movie whatsoever. Not even an occasional laugh, or any cool effects or zombie kills. There's only a handful of zombie extras and it looks like they made this for about ten bucks. They repeat the same jokes over and over. This is the worst zombie comedy film I've ever seen. Skip it. You're welcome.

I have to say, I enjoyed this a lit more than I expected. It had lots of great one liners and awkward comedy moments, and zombies. Plus me, as a zombie extra, I should probably mention. Alex Williamson might well get another role playing the Aussie larrikin based on this performance. Most of his lines were pretty funny and pretty well delivered. Greg Fleet was also very solid and delivered some great lines. Plot wise I loved the concept, and the interplay between the characters was pretty clever. There wasn't a whole lot going on plot wise other than enough to deliver the next classic one liner or gore filled scene, but that wasn't really the point. One minor criticism, the military angle was unresolved, and seemed a bit of an afterthought. Overall, it was pretty bloody hilarious, and well worth your time, even if some of the humour borders on being more than a bit wrong. The opening image and the ending were original and unforgettable. The next movie Daniel and Declan make I'm sure I will also love, as the ideas, writing and humour overall are great. Then again I loved Hot Tub time Machine, so probably don't take this as gospel. To sum up, in my book it's already a cult classic. Aussie zom com - brilliantly realised.

This was just God awful. Definitely no Shaun of the Dead. I don't know if there's an Australian humour that doesn't translate, but I had to turn it off after 50 minutes. There honestly wasn't even anything redeemable enough for it to deserve one star.

An Aussie entry in the over-saturated zom-com genre, Me and My Mates vs. The Zombie Apocalypse sees a group of friends/work colleagues hole up in a telephone exchange where they try to figure out a plan for survival. This formulaic scenario delivers very few surprises and the extremely low-brow and un-PC humour only occasionally hits the mark.

There is a fair amount of splatter that will please gore-hounds, with a neat shotgun blast to the head and lots of gut-munching, but nothing that we haven't seen many times before in much better movies.

Funniest lines (all delivered by Greg Fleet as Roy):

Roy trying to explain how open-minded he is: "Two of my mates are homos: Lesbo Shirl and Billy 'The Ball Bag' Butcher."

Roy tells his pals his nickname, given for his knowledge of dogs and ability to pick chips: "Dog-knowing and chip-picking Roy".

Roy wants to check if someone is infected: "Your cock and balls... get 'em out now."

Did I mention that the comedy wasn't very sophisticated?

3.5/10, rounded down to 3 for having zombies despatched by paintball guns: I'm all for the use of unorthodox weapons, but c'mon...