Mrs. Sharky wanted to watch a romantic comedy. Uh oh.
I said, “What’s in it for me?”
This is the type of give-and-take situation we domesticated adults must consider every single day, and believe me, it ain’t easy.
Fortunately, my painstaking research turned up Warm Bodies, a zesty Canadian zom-rom-com that actually checked all the boxes for both our discerning tastes.
What a find!
Written and directed by Jonathan Levine, and based on a novel by Seattle writer Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies is the story of R (Nicholas Hoult), an unusually thoughtful zombie who wanders around an airport with his fellow undead shufflers, after a plague or virus or something turns a majority of the population into brain-eating ghouls.
“What am I doing with my life?” he wonders in narration. “I’m so pale. I should get out more. I should eat better. My posture is terrible. I should stand up straighter. People would respect me more if I stood up straighter. What’s wrong with me? I just want to connect. Why can’t I connect with people? Oh, right, it’s because I’m dead.”
One fateful day, R impulsively rescues Julie (Teresa Palmer), an armed forager, from a pack of his hungry brethren and takes her to safety. This single act of compassion from a walking dead human changes everything we thought we knew about the entire zombie genre.
Indeed, it starts a movement of humanism among the dead, as long-deceased folks begin to feel—different. Something is stirring.
Warm Bodies could fit snugly inside AMC’s The Walking Dead universe as a diverting subplot. Julie, the daughter of General Grigio (John Malkovich), leader of the militaristic human resistance falls for R, the zombie who ate her boyfriend’s brain.
R and Julie? Try Romeo and Juliet. There’s even a balcony scene.
I’m as surprised as anyone that I enjoyed Warm Bodies as much as I did. It’s funny, smart, kinda scary, and heart-warming as hell. That’s not just a difficult balancing act, it’s a rarely occurring cinematic event.
A horror movie that you can snuggle your honey through.