Warm Bodies

It is a weird thing to see a movie being billed as the first ZomRomCom. A zombie romantic comedy sounds impossible. First off, it just sounds like an idiotic proposition. Then you have to factor in all of the reasons why a ZomRomCom could not exist. Is the movie going to be about two zombies falling in love? That makes no sense, but then again neither does a movie where a living breathing person falls in love with a zombie. I mean, I feel like to make that movie would require some disgusting fetish thing to be established, yet here we are with the first ZomRomCom that I can remember. Now, it is not the first comedy to be set in a world of zombies, and I think even FIDO had some weird zombie/human love thing, but this movie was clearly marketing itself as a romantic comedy with zombies. It got me wondering, would there be a traditional Meet/Cute? Would there be a central conflict outside of, you know, the whole zombie thing? Mostly though, I wondered how kissing would be handled with a zombie. Yes, I know I have random thoughts, but seriously when you think of a RomCom, you think kissing and zombies are typically on the no kiss list. First off, infection turns to zombification, but second, ummm THEY EAT HUMANS!! So it is with these thoughts in mind that I sat down to watch Warm Bodies.

R(Nicholas Hoult)is not your garden variety zombie. First off, he narrates the story. It is not often, a zombie narrates a movie. R cannot remember how the zombie outbreak began, nor can he remember anything about his previous life. he feels like he is missing something, but he is not sure what it is. His exposition is brief and we learn there are two kinds of zombies, the kind who still have human flesh attached and those who do not. The ones who do not are called BONIES. They have lost all hope and eventually their skin rots off and they become all bones. They also become incredibly fast when they become BONIES. Zombies have being turned into BONIES to look forward to. R lives in an airplane and is a collector of stuff. He keeps almost speaking to his possible best friend (Rob Corddry) and he hates that he has to eat humans to stay alive. One day a surviving group of humans are in Zombie territory getting medical supplies, and R and his band of zombies smell them and attack. After killing a human and starting to eat him, R sees a girl, Julie(Teresa Palmer) and his entire world changes. He feels protective of her and even sneaks her out of the danger zone back to his home. His narration lets us know he thinks she is perfect and he wants to act cool in front of her, but he is a zombie. Yet, things start to change. he can say words, he walks less zombieish, believes he starts to feel things and perhaps, he is changing back into a human the longer he stays with her.

Warm Bodies is a clever movie with great wit and a big heart. Is it cheesy? Well, sure it is a bit cheesy, I mean a woman's love starts changing a zombie back into a human, so there is a factor of cheese to it, but everything is so genuine and mostly innocent that the cheesiness ends up being incredibly sweet. Hoult and Palmer have a great chemistry and their scenes are shot, written and directed with sweetness, and humor. It feels like watching a really cute high school couple slowly but surely fall in love, except one does most of his talking as voice over narration because he is too dead to actually speak in complete sentences. The story is also loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, but I was pretty ignorant to that until my girlfriend pointed out the balcony scene. It does not really come off as being truly based on Romeo and Juliet, but looking back there were nice nods to it. However, knowing the balcony scene was a play on Romeo and Juliet made me giggle more during the scene because Romeo had such pretty words with which to woo Juliet and R just kind of shrugs and grunts a lot. However, you sort of understand why she starts to fall for him. He is cute, in a zombieish way, and he is dorky and sweet and welcoming. He protects her from harm multiple times and clearly wants to help her.

My favorite thing about the film is the wit. I did not find it to be generally laugh out loud funny, but more clever or sly with the jokes. It would have been very easy to make it extremely over the top and ridiculous. I mean it is a romantic comedy about a zombie and a human. It would have been so easy to push the limits of good taste in the name of humor. Warm Bodies is not interested in gross out humor though. And it is not interested in going for the easy big broad laugh. There is a great overall feel of warmth that exudes from every moment of the film. This was made by people who cared to tell a heart warming story using the most heartless things they could think of. This is not Twilight, even though I feel the idea for the novel might have been birthed out of this idea of making loveless creatures fall in love. Warm Bodies has too much soul for that. The Julie character is strong and vulnerable. You understand why she could change the whole world by loving a zombie. Teresa Palmer is a knockout, but she is not vain about her beauty. She makes herself open to the idea of truly falling for a flesh eating creature.

Warm Bodies might be the least gross or gory zombie movie to ever exist as well. There is action though. I really enjoyed the climatic action sequence. It was funny, but also thrilling. I thought the effects of the BONIES were very well rendered. Jonathan Levine, the writer and director, has a great touch for material. This is the third movie (50/50 and The Wackness) of his I have seen and the one constant in those three movies is how he treats the characters as real people with real lives and real emotions. He believes characters drive plots and not the other way around. I very much admire him for caring so much about his characters because it makes it so much easier for us to care about his characters. I should have not felt so strongly towards this weird ZomRomCom. Oh and yes, there is a Meet/Cute but it is not terribly cute. It is definitely weird.

Oh last thought, I loved that the zombies absorbed the memories of the people whose brains they ate. For some reason, that aspect of zombieism made it so much more tragic. And it made R that much more of a tragic hero to me, but not in the traditional sense because tragic heroes die and R starts undead. Well, you know what I mean

Final Grade: B+