Metacritic reviews

Zombieland: Double Tap is a riot, and a lot of that is due to Zoey Deutch and her character, Madison. While it doesn’t quite achieve classic status in its own right, when it comes to sequels that do the original film justice, it is up there. It’s worth the wait, your time and your money.

Zombieland: Double Tap continues the original’s cheeky tone and irreverent humor, while it also acknowledges that it’s a series a little out of place and time with the current political age. But if all you’re looking for is “Shaun of the Dead,” but American, then this is the movie for you.

For all the flying intestines and skulls that split open like past-due melons, Double Tap has another squishy organ at its center: a big, goofball heart.

Rounding up all the original's stars and throwing several more surviving human characters into the mix, the pic is plenty entertaining for those of us who, paradoxically, find zombies comforting in dark times.

Everyone on screen is good enough to do this sort of thing in their sleep, which isn’t to say Harrelson, Eisenberg, Stone, Breslin and Deutch laze through the assignment. The first “Zombieland” remains director Fleischer’s best movie by a mile; this one acknowledges, brazenly, the familiarity of it all.

It’s often enjoyable, occasionally very funny, and has an energy and verve sorely lacking from Fleischer’s last few films. So, while it’s simply, plainly, not as good as the first movie, Zombieland is no longer the odd one out on Fleischer’s CV.

Gore and guffaws go hand in weapon-wielding hand in a belated follow-up that struggles to replicate the original’s winning formula.

Despite the good vibes and amiable callbacks to the previous film, “Zombieland: Double Tap” is only ever amusing when it’s breaking new ground. That just doesn’t happen nearly enough.

Humor turns every kill into a sick punchline, and while the writers do a fine job of making them funny, like macabre cartoons in which Wile E. Coyote can rebound from unthinkable injuries, the movie’s tone negates a fundamental respect for human life.

Though it coasts on some wildly uneven star charisma, there’s nothing particularly objectionable about Double Tap, finally. It’s fine? It’s just a time-killer we didn’t much need, a decade after we hardly needed the first one.