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Zombieland: Double Tap begins brilliantly, as the Columbia lady is approached by two zombies and smacks them both to death with her torch, then twirls it about and holds it aloft once again 🙂
Early on, however, one thing is odd – only three of the main four cast members get a namecheck above the title in the opening credits. Sure, Abigail Breslin isn’t as big as the other three in terms of star power, but she’s a key member of the cast, yes?
Anyhoo, the zombies have evolved in the past ten years. The dumbest ones are called Homer (Simpson), the clever ones are Hawking (Stephen), and there’s a new kind of zombie that’s out there – the T-800, because the Terminator-type just can’t be killed… well, can’t be done easily.
Soon after, our heroes take over the White House, with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) stating he’s President. Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) wants to go out on her own after all this time together, and both Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and Wichita (Emma Stone) have settled down to unmarried life.
As before, lots of captions pop up such as “Zombie Kill of the Year” and “Double Tap”, for when you shoot a zombie twice. Meanwhile, Tallahassee wants to get to Graceland, while most of the rest are looking to get to a gun-free safe place called Babylon. Then, after the men get separated from the women, Columbus meets young blonde Madison (Zoey Deutch), which causes its own set of problems for the group, but it does have some good gags in it, such as when Tal tells Columbus that Madison is only alive because zombies eat brains, and she doesn’t have any. Plus, she doesn’t know why the Oval Office is so-called…
Along the way, the gang meet some guys who are very similar to them (Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch), while shooting someone because you think they’re a zombie is called “Murraying” because they bumped off Bill Murray last time. However, like the first film, this does feel like a cast in search of a plot, improvising as they go.
Avan Jogia and Rosario Dawson also pop up as potential love interests for Messrs Breslin and Harrelson, too.
Overall, Zombieland was fairly so-so, and Zombieland: Double Tap continues this trend. See you again here in ten years for No.3, then.
When it comes to Bill Murray, he appears in a mid-credits sequence…
If you enjoyed the film, then you’ll be pleased it looks stunning. The audio is complementary, but it’s not a party piece.
The extras are mostly brief featurettes, but start with:
- Extended Bloopers and Outtakes (4:52): The cast corpse aplenty.
- Deleted Scenes (12:42): A number of different scenes, but none of which need to go back into the film.
- The Doppelgangers (7:02): Focusing on the characters of Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch.
- A Day with Bill Murray (3:11): And he ad-libs throughout, and showing how they only had 90 minutes to film the main section, which I mentioned in the spoiler piece.
- The Rides of Zombieland (4:14): Cars, rather than fairground rides. I was confused.dom
- Rules for Making a Zombie Film (9:10): Going into detail about the endless rules that the gang have.
- Making Babylon (5:04): Putting together the set for the zombie-free safe space.
- New Blood (4:41): Concentrating on the new cast members played by Zoey Deutch, Avan Jogia and Rosario Dawson.
- Single-take Doppelganger Fight (2:18): In this film this did look like there was at least one jump-cut, and in this extra, you can see two: 1:10 and 1:28.
- Zombieland Ad Council (0:32): A teaser for the film. As they state, you can never predict emergencies, but you can be ready. That must be why I bought a ton of toilet roll about a week before the Coronavirus madness. The fake ad suggests you go to https://ready.gov, which is actually a real website.
- Audio commentary: from director Ruben Fleischer.
A piece of the theme over the credits, set against a static image of the four main cast members, and after you see the film, it’s clear that the image has been photoshopped such that everyone’s just a little bit thinner than they are normally, although it was most noticable on Breslin with her face and thighs. (Oh, someone’s going to moan about that, but the photoshopping is a fact, right?)
Chapters come in a reasonable number of 16, and subtitles are in several languages, listed below.
Zombieland: Double Tap: Criterion Collection is out now on Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray, Amazon Video and DVD.
You can also buy the Zombieland Double Bill on Blu-ray and DVD.
Also available are Rule coasters:
- Rule #1: Cardio
- Rule #2: Double Tap
- Rule #3: Beware of Bathrooms
- Rule #4: Seatbelts
- Rule #7: Travel Light
- Rule #17: Don’t Be A Hero
- Rule #18: Limber Up
- Rule #22: When In Doubt, Know Your Way Out
- Rule #31: Check Your Back Seat
- Rule #32: Enjoy The Little Things
(Click on the image for the 4K-sized version)
|
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
5 10 8 7 |
| OVERALL | 7.5 |
Cert: 
Running time: 99 minutes
Year: 2019
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Cat.no: 050629239836
Released: February 24th 2020
Chapters: 16
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio: English, Polish; DD5.1: English, Czech, Hungarian
Subtitles: English SDH, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Turkish
Widescreen: 2.39:1 (CineForm RAW, Anamorphic Panavision)
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Producers: Kevin Miller, Gavin Polone
Screenplay: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Dave Callaham
Music: David Sardy
Cast:
Tallahassee: Woody Harrelson
Columbus: Jesse Eisenberg
Wichita: Emma Stone
Little Rock: Abigail Breslin
Madison: Zoey Deutch
Berkeley: Avan Jogia
Nevada: Rosario Dawson
Albuquerque: Luke Wilson
Flagstaff: Thomas Middleditch
Babylonian Gatekeeper: Victoria Hall
Civil War Bearded Guy: Victor Rivera
Bowel Blast Guy: Ian Gregg
Cool Hat Guy: Devin Mojica
Terrified Woman in Snow: Rachel Luttrell
Homer Zombie in Snow: John Dixon
Scared Lab Tech: Ronny A Mathew
Beatrix Hawking: Jess Durham
Exoculated Scientist: David Fleischer
Survivor with Flashlight: Jenin Gonzalez
Ninja Zombie: Felix Betancourt
Dave Sanderman: Lucas Fleischer
Haybale Z: Gianni Biasetti Jr
T-800 Z: Ari Loeb
Matteo Bianchi: Anthony Dilio
Himself: Bill Murray
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.