Though topping the box office by a landslide, to the average viewer this movie might come off as a cross between a “wrong side of the tracks” romance and “Twilight.”
But from the viewpoint of someone who has seen more than her fair share of ’80’s high-school romance movies, as well as being well-educated in all of the “Twilight” hoopla; “Warm Bodies” is much different.
My opinion of romanticcomedies in general may be tainted, being that I am a female. Is that what this movie was meant to be? A romantic comedy? Either way, it was a great, feel-good movie, with an equally great soundtrack.
Actor Nicholas Hoult, you may know him as Tony from the widely popular British television series “Skins,” is cast terrifically as R the unusual, down-on-his-luck zombie who wants nothing more than to be alive again. The name R comes from all that our zombie friend was able to communicate to whom would become his love interest, Julie, played by Teresa Palmer.
What we have here is a continuation of the zombie-apocalypse trend in the version of a “mansel” in distress story.
However, “Warm Bodies” is probably more well-acted than many of the other versions of zombie movies.
Possibly the only arguable casting issue: when you pay the presumably large amount of money that it takes to get John Malkovich in a movie, you use him more than the five or so minutes of screen time than he was given.
Hence, Malkovich, as well as Rob Corddry’s (The Daily Show) comedy chops were severely underused, but that is another story.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, with a large guarded wall separating the undead in various forms from the humans, “Warm Bodies” gets a slow start with a narrative by R. But after eating Julie’s boyfriend’s (Dave Franco) brain, R begins falling in love with her. Nonetheless, their warped courting is endearing.
R ends up saving Julie from a zombie attack, and after several failed attempts at escaping, where he saves her time and again, they begin a whirlwind romance.
One by one, the zombies’ hearts begin beating and emotions start coming back through love and human interactions, with R being the first zombie to experience this phenomenon. Could the zombies be curing themselves?
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