Warm Bodies

TAKE 1: One Man’s Opinion

…because film is largely subjective

by Frederick William Springer III

 

Warm Bodies

Release Date:  1 February 2013                                                             Runtime:  98 Minutes              

Review Date:  14 April 2013                                                                  Rating:  3 (of 6)

     While a different and interesting idea—a zombie with feelings and the capacity to love—ultimately Warm Bodies was slow and, in parts, even boring;  which, I guess, may be appropriate as I imagine that’s what a zombie’s life is like anyhow and we are told the story from zombie R’s perspective.

     I would have enjoyed seeing more of Rob Corddry, who had a small supporting role as M, as I usually enjoy his performances.

     I do question if there was a zombie walking around with brains in his pocket for several days, fresh when he obtained them, that there wouldn’t be an offending odor.  I would also question, zombies being rotting corpses and all, wouldn’t they reek horribly, so much so that they’d make people automatically retch?  They do kind of dismissively touch on the latter with an off-handed comment, just saying they don’t, but I’m sure the brains in your pocket thing would still smell pretty bad.

     I also don’t get how the skeletons are faster than the zombie corpses.  You might justify that by them not having meat on their bones that they’re actually lighter so they can run faster.  But at the same time, they don’t have muscles, or very little of them remain.  Yet, the skeletons are also portrayed as extremely powerful but, again, have no muscles.  So, I don’t get that.

     It did have its humorous parts, but they were far apart most of the time.  So, again, slow and boring.  In fact, if this hadn’t been the case, I don’t know that I would have had time to ponder and then dwell on the questions that came to mind above.  In fact, of all the zombie movies I’ve ever seen (and there have been many), I have never once questioned that they should smell and should probably do so to the point of enacting one’s gag reflex but, if I ever write my own zombie movie, I now know that that is something that will need to be addressed—zombies can’t sneak up on you because you’ll smell them coming unless our noses become so desensitized because the whole world now permanently smells that way.  So, thank you for that Warm Bodies.

     Another question:  Having been based upon a book, how did the theatrical version fair against it?  Unfortunately, the movie left me no desire to find out for myself.