Zombieland: Double Tap Review
Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock move to the American heartland as they face off against evolved zombies, fellow survivors, and the growing pains of the snarky makeshift family.
R: For Bloody violence, language throughout, some drug and sexual content
Production Companies: Columbia Pictures, Pariah
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Runtime: 1 Hour and 33 Minutes
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Writers: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Dave Callaham
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, Emma Stone, Rosario Dawson, Zoey Deutch, Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch
Release Date: October 18, 2019
Sing this in the tune of Barenaked Ladies’ One Week:
It’s been 10 years since the last movie
A product of its time and we waited anxiously
For this cast and crew to return since their careers exploded astoundingly
The writers are known for Deadpool
And director went on to direct some Venomous doo-doo
Ensemble went on to be nominated for Oscars aside from Abi
Now we’re in 2019, and we’re all older
We have a new Zombieland
All right, that was all the parody I could mileage. This movie is mediocre as hell. 10 years since the predecessor and this is what you came up with?
10 years have passed since the last time we saw Columbus, Little Rock, Wichita, and Tallahassee. Now the crew is like a family. They’ve aged, but they haven’t really evolved. However, their relationship as a unit has strengthened and some of the dynamic has changed. Tallahassee has become an overbearing father figure to Little Rock, Columbus is about to pop the question to Wichita, and both of the sisters get overwhelmed and dip out of the home for a bit… well, for a month. The sisters pick up a hippie from Berkeley to serve as a love interest for Little Rock who hasn’t met anyone her age. Columbus and Tallahassee run into a Paris Hilton/Mean Girls-like ditzy blonde named Madison. When Wichita returns a month later — or literally moments after Columbus and Madison hookup — she informs them that Little Rock ran off with the pretentious guitarist and it’s up to them to hit the road and get her back home.
As a fan of the predecessor, it is undoubtedly pleasing to see the reunion of this talented, charismatic cast as they seamlessly fall back into their roles, delivering the same kinetic energy and chemistry from the predecessor. Granted, they’re all just playing their usual character types — seriously, Jesse Eisenberg has been Columbus in every role since 2009, just in different scenarios. It’s good to see how well everyone aged and how they still manage to bounce humor off each other. Everything works best when it’s the four of them (or three, I guess, since Breslin is mostly out of the picture this time around) screwing about, arguing and annoying each other because of the differences in personalities. As weak as the story is, the entertainment value truly comes from the energy of the performers who you can tell had a blast filming this just by watching them do their thing on screen.
Newcomer Zoey Deutch manages to steal the show whenever she’s on-screen. Deutch has been exceptionally showcasing her comedic range for several years now and she keeps on surprising. She has an unlimited amount of energy and flair that fits so well within the rest of the cast, oftentimes dominating the show, stealing scenes with just her dialogue and delivery. Granted, she’s a one-note stereotype of the dumb blonde — an outdated trope that Reese Witherspoon had to make an empowering franchise out of just to get people to look at them differently — but damn, she managed to crack me up all the time. Zoey Deutch is a national treasure of an actress and she elevated this movie for me. Most of my laughs came straight from her. Though the film is oftentimes way too over-reliant on her, using her to ad-lib or add an extra emphasis on humor to alleviate the violence onscreen, she still manages to be hilarious.
If there was anything that the first Zombieland did exceptionally, it was the showcase of the talents of not just the cast, but writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, putting them on the map long before penning Deadpool.. Then, it launched Ruben Fleischer into his own directorial career, making classics such as 30 Minutes or Less, Gangster Squad, and of course, Venom. What a weird switcheroo of dynamics where I would’ve expected the direction of this film to be really bad and the writing to be adequate, but honestly, I found the direction to be adequate and the script to be really bad, which is saying a lot given the works of these two writers.
If there’s anything that Zombieland: Double Tap solidifies, it’s that Reese and Wernick are incredibly lazy when it comes to writing sequels. Speaking of its title, the most excruciating aspect about Zombieland: Double Tap is how often it relies on double-tapping the unique elements that made its predecessor so special, repeating the same jokes and gags from the original and not doing anything new aside from being “meta” and misinterpreting that as a means of being clever. Just because you made a comment about how outdated your joke is, it doesn’t make your joke clever, which this movie prides itself on doing. This has been an obnoxious recurrence with many comedy sequels and it has been emphasized even further by these two writers (I guess three due to Dave Callaham’s credit) without any thought or effort when it comes to story.
Story-wise, the film fails to justify its own existence, especially given its decade-long wait. It copies the notes of every lazy sequel and shamelessly applies them all. There were two routes of laziness this film could’ve taken: the typical, “Let’s do the first movie all over again,” or the Illumination Entertainment route. This took the Illumination Entertainment route of storytelling where it doubles down on the elements of the movie, takes the generic sitcom-level concepts, and applies them to something everyone loved. I shit you not, this covers the same exact plotlines of Despicable Me 2 (give the lead a love interest — or in this case, everyone who was lacking a love interest in the predecessor someone to bone, because a world overrun with zombies makes everyone extremely horny) and Despicable Me 3 (where the leads have doppelgangers and shenanigans ensue). What makes it lazier is the fact that the film would set up potentially creative ideas to explore, such as the new stronger breed of zombies called T-800s, and never really explore them. The new characters that are introduced aren’t given much material, or they mileage them enough so when the film gets exhausted, they just dispose of them like a dirty rag. Hell, by the climax the film just says, “Fuck it” and forgets the concept of time where everyone assembles with an elaborate plan in the span of 15 minutes when it should’ve taken longer considering the new kind of foes they’d be facing.
From a narrative standpoint, this is more episodic than fluent, feeling like a rushed afterthought made from a place of commission rather than of love. I don’t know if the writers are too damn preoccupied thinking of a concept for Deadpool 3, but the laziness of the writing is way too obvious that it disrupts the pacing of the movie. The film has a 93-minute runtime, yet it feels like it’s two hours long. As entertaining as it is in some parts, some scenes drag for way too long and they usually end up going nowhere, resulting in either unfunny punchlines or needless narration from Columbus. Seriously, this movie is way too reliant on Eisenberg’s narration that I found myself completely detached from any meaningful significance to any scene, where his dialogue is just reading the obvious emotions of the characters on screen. Like, boy, I get it. I don’t need you to guide my hand through the story. I know it’s dumb, but don’t assume I’m dumb.
Speaking of dumb, the fucking stereotypes here are so ill-conceived and outdated. Even if this was made immediately after the first, a lot of the stereotypes are 30 years too late. I’m going to say this shit once so pay close attention: Gen-Z people are not fucking hippies. We’re not fucking hippies, we’re not pessimists. We’re not fucking hippies. Get it through your fucking skull you dense Hollywood writers. You’re pissing me off at this point. I don’t want to sound like a broken record but for fuck’s sake, you writers need to watch Booksmart and dissect how Gen-Z is written before you go off and write characters of that demographic. Like, we’re in 2019. The movie is aware that it takes place in 2019. WHO THE FUCK THINKS GEN-Z ARE PEACE-LOVING HIPPIES WHO PLAY HACKY SACK?! It’s so outdated. This shit isn’t a period piece. Just fuck off, man. Let me cool off a bit before I conclude the review. Here’s my trusted colleague Myan with her thoughts:
One of the few things that Zombieland: Double Tap gets right is the gory depiction of its monsters. The zombie violence is still very R-rated and it makes for some interesting showdowns. The cast is charismatic enough to keep you watching despite the poorly-written content and the outdated jokes. Another thing that the film gets right is the runtime. Had this been a minute longer, I might’ve walked out.
The stereotypical blonde jokes and the hippie tropes prove that the writers exhausted all of their material on Deadpool and never recharged their batteries. There were many moments throughout Zombieland: Double Tap that were clearly meant to be “hilarious” but were met with absolute silence. Maybe these writers should take a much-needed break and come back to screenwriting when they’ve caught up with modern comedy.
The T-800 zombies, like all of the side characters, were introduced for the sake of comedy only to be lazily dismissed when they weren’t of immediate use. It’s a disservice to what could’ve been a solid zombie/comedy franchise. But hey, at least the movie’s short.
Even though the cast’s energy is still intact and is mindlessly entertaining in spurts, Zombieland: Double Tap is a lazily written sequel that is carelessly over-reliant on the unique ingredients that made the first one special. Zombieland: Double Tap is the disappointing movie that we all collectively feared the predecessor was going to be.
