Take the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast and we have the charmingly funny Warm Bodies. When marauding zombies corner some human teens, a hunky teen zombie is smitten by a saucy live girl (Teresa Palmer), saves her from his comrades and shambles her off to his lair. After he saves her life a few times, she begins to look past his deadness. But her people want to shoot him in the head, and his people want to feast on her organs, so there’s that.
Nicholas Hoult, all grown up from his role as the kid in About a Boy, plays the zombie. Although he can only grunt to the zombies and live humans, the audience hears him narrating his thoughts. It’s normal for any besotted guy to warn himself, “Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”, but it’s very funny when the guy is dead and looks dead.
Director Jonathan Levine’s (50/50) screenplay is adapted from Isaac Marion’s novel, and it hits all the right notes. It’s the story of a really nice boy trying to get a girl to like him, and it’s just hard for her to get past the fact that he ate her boyfriend’s brains.
Rob Corddray is excellent as Hoult’s zombie best friend and, hey, John Malkovich is in this movie, too. I’m going to include Warm Bodies in my upcoming list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.
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