‘Warm Bodies’ tries to be a dark and quirky zombified retelling of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ Sadly, by the time the story really started moving, I was looking for a zombie to bite me.
In the past several months, I’ve become a very big fan of Nicholas Hoult. Over the winter hiatus, I targeted the UK version of Skins as one of those shows I would finally watch. Hoult starred as Tony Stonem in the first two seasons of the show, and was phenomenal. His star is on the rise now, with roles in X-Men: First Class and the upcoming Jack the Giant Slayer. When I recognized him in the Warm Bodies trailer, I instantly identified the latest zombie-apocalypse/Romeo and Juliet send-up as one to look out for. Sadly, Warm Bodies never lived up to the expectations the marketing push created for it.
If you’ve not seen the trailer, go out of your way to avoid it; it spoils most of the funny.
If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve got a very good grasp of what the film is all about – on the other hand, if you’ve not seen the trailer, go out of your way to avoid it. Hoult plays R, a zombie just trying to get through his repetitive, boring day. He’s got a pal – Warm Bodies diverges from established zombie lore in several fun ways – M (Rob Corddry), whom he has daily conversations with that sometimes – just sometimes – might include one barely recognizable word in a sea of grunts. They spend their days looking for humans to eat while steering clear of Bonies, zombies that have devolved into adversarial skeletal monsters.
Things change when R and M’s pack comes across a team of humans foraging for medical supplies, lead by Julie (Teresa Palmer), Nora (Analeigh Tipton) and Perry (Dave Franco). R immediately sees something in Julie that he doesn’t understand, and secrets her back to the abandoned airplane he calls home. The emotions he develops for her start a slow chain reaction that seems to be curing R, and eventually M and others, of their zombie infection.
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Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Summit