Zombieland: Double Tap

Hollywood likes to give us different kinds of sequels.  Some sequels exist to continue a story, or perhaps give us closure.  Some others repeat the same formula as the original, only changing things up as necessary.  And then there are sequels like Zombieland: Double Tap, which repeats the formula, only much louder and dumber.  Some fans of the 2009 original might like this, but I found it to be overkill.

The success of Zombieland from 10 years ago is that it was unexpected, as well as a lot of fun.  I got behind the characters and the sense of humor that it had.  This time around, I just couldn't get behind anything.  The characters and the cast are the same, as is most of the creative team behind the camera.  But rather than change up anything, they've just cranked up the volume.  The zombies are nastier and messier than before, there is a lot more pop culture humor and movie references that range from The Terminator to Paul Blart and The Simpsons, and there is more fourth-wall breaking.  In the last film, Woody Harrelson was the grizzled and foul-mouthed survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse, Jesse Eisenberg was his young sidekick who acted as the film's narrator, and Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin were two young women they picked up along the way.  They repeat these roles here, only to much less effect.

The plot: Our four heroes are still fighting their way across zombie-infested America, until they decide to make their home in the abandoned White House.  The men seem happy there, but the women get restless quickly, and decide to run off on their own.  Young Columbus (Eisenberg) is naturally heartbroken that Wichita (Stone) has run out on him, as he was hoping they could get married.  Meanwhile, Tallahassee (Harrelson) seems to think they're better off without Wichita and Little Rock (Breslin) weighing them down.  The men are not alone for long, as they are quickly joined by a bubble-headed blonde named Madison (Zoey Deutch), who often comes across as less like a character, and more like a one-joke gag. (She's blonde, so naturally, she's incredibly dumb and clueless about everything.)

This is a recurring problem that I had with this sequel.  The movie would build characters around a single gag, and then drag it out to the point that I just wanted the movie to move on already.  A perfect example would be when Tallahassee and Columbus meet their almost exact doppelgangers at one point, a pair by the name of Albuquerque (Luke Wilson) and Flagstaff (Thomas Middleditch).  As expected, the pair act and think almost exactly the same as our heroes, only with slight differences.  That's as far as the joke goes, but the movie drags this joke out for a good ten or twelve minutes.  It never builds to anything worthwhile, and the characters exit not long after they enter, which left me questioning why they were introduced in the first place, as they contribute nothing other than a failed gag that doesn't work.

The movie does introduce some new characters, such as an Elvis-obsessed woman whom Tallahassee develops a relationship with (Rosario Dawson), and a commune of hippies that Little Rock runs off with who don't believe in violence.  But again, very little is attempted with these new elements.  The movie instead decides to throw in a lot more meta humor, including Columbus' narration, which frequently reminds the audience that they are watching a movie.  We get some weak running gags involving a mini van that the heroes constantly find themselves in, and a lot of callbacks to the first movie.  What we don't get, and what I kept on waiting for, is a reason as to why the movie needed to be made, other than some studio executive wanted to play on the nostalgia that people hold for the first. 

To be fair, Zombieland: Double Tap does have one inspired scene that comes during the end credits, so don't get out of your seat when the credits start up.  It doesn't redeem what comes before it, but it's the one moment that this sequel got right for me.  I almost would like to see a spin off film built around what happened next.  To explain anymore would ruin the gag, so I will say no more.

0 comments