Warm Bodies from Liongate Films presented by West Coast Midnight Run

West Coast Midnight Run™ is a copyrighted publication of Citadel Consulting Group LLC

WARM BODIES
Lionsgate Films
MPAA Rating PG-13
(Comedy, horror, romance)

Running Time: 1 hr. 37 min.

Score: B+

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich , Rob Corddry, Analeigh Tipton

Directed and written by: Jonathan Levine
Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe

By Francis Benetti

Present day continental USA and survivors in a huge metropolis are fighting against their own extinction as the world may have experienced a global scale event, the source of which is unknown.

Will different factions be able to cope despite obvious incompatibilities and inability to mesh synergies? Can this scenario work as a backdrop for a romantic comedy?

Original photo © 2013 Lions Gate Films Inc.

Warm Bodies is an excellent choice this year if you are tired with superhero adventure films and need a slight change of pace.

Warm Bodies has a definite science fiction tilt and could be construed to fall from the world of Bizarro, the square sister planet of Earth populated entirely by clones of Superman, where the inhabitants are slow-moving, slow-witted and pretty much impervious to pain and death.

For a movie viewer that has not been going steady with the recent zombie movies genre, this adventure is quite funny, light headed entertainment,

introducing the latest crop of moviegoers to the new Marilyn, the blonde dame from the Munsters Family.

The movie’s comedy regimen is not so much from funny dialogue as it is from an unusually bizarre premise.

Warm Bodies is also an excellent refresher on the entire genre of new zombie movies, perhaps it could be said that its daddy may have been the 1980s low budget cult sci-fi romantic comedy film, Night of the Comet - spawning a staple of celebrities including Robert Beltran eventually playing Number One in the Star Trek Voyager series as Chakotay, the intrepid sidekick to

Captain Janeway and cult B-movies queen Catherine Mary Stewart, starring in 1980s hits such as The Last Starfighter and in recent films such as Rising Stars.

Starring Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer in the lead roles, this may well be Palmer’s breakout role in a highly successful commercial film, although star watchers may have already noticed her in a recent string of films, all of which have to some extent disappointed film critics.

John Malkovich brings in the heavyweight bad ass punch but some of the more touching moments and

scene stealers belong to Rob Corddry in a small and yet pivotal supporting role. Moviegoers anticipating parallels with the Twilight film saga could discover this film having a completely different tone and direction, even though by all counts, Twilight director, producer and writer Stephenie Meyer expressed admiration for the original novel from Isaac Marion stating “this story stayed with me long after I was done reading it.”

Although rated PG-13, the movie does have some pretty strong visual depictions that are tame compared to some slasher movies. Nevertheless viewer be warned some scenes

are graphic and violent, even though the tone is less pure horror and more comedy.

Like some many romantic and dramatic movies before it, the adaptation from Levine also draws projection lines from Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet right onto the core premise, creating some tension in the storyline and accentuating the comedic aspects of the film.

Fear not though, Warm Bodies is far from 16th Century England as the film borrows storytelling techniques and style that have far more in common with the visual devices used in the French

2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie titled Amélie and - oddly enough - some of the quirkiness as well that so charmed audiences worldwide.

Levine also manages to admirably create the sense of waiting, of foreboding, while also shifting gears and giving us some of the pent up frustrations of young love in a world slowly, slowly wading its way at the end of its entropic cycle.