Mark Reviews Movies: ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 18, 2019

It has been ten years since Zombieland was released, just around the start of a nascent revival of zombie stories, especially at the movies. That was 2009, so why does Zombieland: Double Tap, a long-delayed sequel that now shows up after zombie stories have basically become passé again, feel as if it belongs to an era 20 years before the original movie?

The easy guess is that returning screenwriters Dave Callaham, Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick said whatever they wanted to say and made the jokes they wanted to make with the first movie. Now, well, they're just out of ideas. What kind of jokes do you make when you're out of ideas? Why, you go for the easy ones, of course.

That's what it feels like when Madison (Zoey Deutch, who proves too good for this material, which is probably a promising sign for her rising career), a blonde who has been living in the freezer of a mall yogurt shop for years, joins a couple of our returning protagonists. The character's hair color is important, because, well, Madison is pretty dumb.

She's quite dumb, save for the facts that she has survived this long amidst a zombie apocalypse, that she makes a couple of pertinent cultural references, and that she comes up with the idea for a ride-sharing company (which apparently never existed, given that, in this world, the zombie outbreak began before anyone else started one). It's one thing to revive the stale gag of the dumb blonde, because the screenwriters couldn't think of anything else. To undermine the consistency of such a basic joke, simply to make a couple of other easy ones, is just a wholly different level of lazy.

That's what we're dealing with here: a sequel—arriving at least five years too late—to a movie—which itself struggled to maintain the humor of its self-aware premise—that attempts to justify its experience by having a returning cast—whose members repeatedly look as if they're on the verge of breaking character, because they probably don't care about being here—try their best with some dull jokes. Trying to figure out what went wrong is definitely more interesting than almost everything that happens in the movie.

Sometime after the events of the first movie, the quartet of that story has survived and seen the zombies evolve. Some are dumb. Some are smart. There are rumors of a next step in zombie evolution—faster, stronger, and smarter ones.

Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) explains all of this to us via a knowing, winking voice-over gimmick, which served as one of the brighter spots of the first movie. His rules for surviving have some bright spots now, too, such as enjoying the little things. He is, after all, dating Wichita (Emma Stone), who's still afraid of commitment.

The group has decided to make a home at the White House, where Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) enjoys celebrating Christmas, regardless of the date on the calendar. He has also become an overbearing father figure to Wichita's younger sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who has grown up and now wants to meet people her own age.

The women, feeling confined, leave, leaving Columbus and Tallahassee to fend for themselves. That's how the two meet Madison, and that's when Wichita returns, with news that her sister has run away with a hippie—and just in time to find out that the guy who wanted to marry her already has slept with the stupid blonde. The trio, plus Madison, set off to find Little Rock, killing zombies along the way.

The screenplay relies a lot on Madison's stupidity (and seemingly dismisses the character with an unnecessary level of cruelty, only to bring her back when the already-scarce jokes become even scarcer). Then it relies on the pompous nature of Little Rock's new hippie friend Berkeley (Avan Jogia), before introducing an entire commune of like minds to lampoon in the most obvious way. In case the desperation isn't clear, the group's destination is Graceland, and that means a lot of Elvis jokes to throw into the pile of humor that would have seemed dated before the original movie was released.

At least the stop provides a trio of some relief in the forms of Rosario Dawson, Luke Wilson, and Thomas Middleditch. The first plays a tough-as-nails Elvis fan, and the other two play characters who are mirror images of Tallahassee and Columbus—a funny idea for a gag that, unfortunately, goes nowhere. That's more than can be said of the whole of Zombieland: Double Tap, which also goes nowhere—only without the benefit of an idea for its purpose.

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