Mad Cow Disease has mutated into something far worse, and the world is overrun by bloodthirsty hordes of post-28 DAYS LATER sprinting infected*. Four lone survivors come together and make their way across a ruined and desolate America, all for the love of Twinkies and in the hopes of finding someplace free of zombies**.

It's DAWN OF THE DEAD meets NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION, but this is really all you need to know: ZOMBIELAND contains one of the funniest sequences ever put to film***. Feel free to stop reading this review right now because the damned movie is worth your time for this sequence alone, and if you keep reading you may miss the next available screening. I'll keep talking, and you can come back afterward to see if your opinion lines up with mine.

I liked this movie. I flat-out adored entire chunks of it, and I found the aforementioned sequence to be some kind of surreal cinematic divinity, but, well...

Reviews can't really be trusted, can they? I didn't like Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD all that much, the first time around, and it's now my favorite film****. I initially enjoyed the hell out of Zack Synder's nominal remake, but I currently find it vapid and damned near unwatchable. Right now, less than 24 hours since I've seen it, I'm not sure what I think of ZOMBIELAND. Or, I should say, I'm not sure what I'll think of ZOMBIELAND two years from now, once I've seen it a few more times and its taken its proper place upon the shelf.

Unavoidable comparisons can and have been made to SHAUN OF THE DEAD, despite the fact that their similarities are superficial. SHAUN is the better film, but ZOMBIELAND has one advantage over the Wright/Pegg classic: it's funnier. As in: I laughed harder, and I laughed more often.

I laughed harder, but I didn't come away from ZOMBIELAND as satisfied as I did from SHAUN. ZOMBIELAND it isn't nearly as well-rounded and thoughtful as SHAUN, nor are its characters as endearing. It succeeds as a comedy, but its attempts at poignancy are shallow. Unlike, for example, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, the scales are tipped heavily in favor of LAUGHS, and characterization and heart are sometimes reduced to shorthand.

The comedy is solid, yes, but the characters are never allowed to become approximations of real people because they're always stopping to do senseless things in order to facilitate a punchline*****. The result is an uneven whole in which often hilarious gags unfortunately undermine logic and drama.

Flaws aside, this movie delivers. From the rocking opening credits to the video game shoot-em-up amusement-park climax, ZOMBIELAND does not waste a single moment of its surprisingly tight 82-minute running time. It's got laughs and blood and zombies and one of the funniest sequences, like, of all damned time. What more do you need?******

*Honestly, I would not be surprised if first-time director Ruben Fleischer hasn't seen a zombie film made before 28 DAYS LATER. ZOMBIELAND presents little to none of the love of Romero's work that one finds in SHAUN OF THE DEAD. This is not really a mark against the movie, and will matter only to diehards. A good movie is a good movie, and ZOMBIELAND is one.

** If you give me the "It's not really a zombie movie line because they're just infected!" line I'm going to kick you in the balls. Zombies are not real, and can be interpreted in any number of ways. Inspired by Richard Matheson's distillation of vampires to their most base attributes, Romero redefined zombies in 1968. Some forty years later, they are once more being redefined. There is nothing wrong with this.

*** I forgot to pay full attention to the end credits, so I am uncertain, but I don't know if this movie was shot on film or not. The daytime scenes looked like film, but there were certain nighttime/dark shots that looked like HD.

**** Granted, I watched it with the volume mostly down because someone was moaning about the TV being too loud, or something. I don't remember; I was twelve. Liked it a lot more the second time around, and have seen it far too many times for me to publicly admit, even among present company.

***** Pretty much the entire last act. Our heroes were smart enough to survive an all-out zombie apocalypse, but when they get to a darkened amusement part, they turn on all the lights and fire up the rides.

****** Yes, I stole the asterisk footnotes from Chud.com. Devin stole them from some other writer, so screw you. I tried to use appropriate numerical footnotes, but the formatting was all wonky, and Yon Old Editor would have gotten all grumpy and confused.