Zombieland

Well, the old warhorse, Banjo Woody,
Really lights up the screen with his dumb charm
In this too-promising distraction--why
The strange "Bill Murray" interlude, although
It is, I must admit, the film's best scene--
Featuring Jesse Eisenberg as Nerd,
Harrelson as his Twinkie-loving Rube,
Some girls as girls, and, yes, Bill Murray as
Bill Murray. And the film is great: it's clever,
Well-acted, entertaining, mostly fun.
But mostly. The first eighty minutes felt,
To me, effortless and intelligent;
The final twenty, on the other hand,
Dragged on, predictable and leaden. Dull.
The problem is the movie's vast potential
To be better than it is: not a joke
Merely, like so many zombie duds,
But a self-conscious, self-sustaining work,
A rightful heir to George Romero's mighty
Dawn of the Dead, which mixes equally
The goofy and the abject, droll and dread,
Horror and comedy. The film's worst flaw
Is nothing that it does, but doesn't do:
Develop the absurd into an art;
Take the irrational and make it both
Too funny not to revel in, too true
Not to disturb and scare us with its logic.
Nevertheless, Bill Murray as a man
Pretending-to-be-zombie, who gets shot
In his own movietheater, as it screens
Ghostbusters--awesome. That is truly AWESOME. B