Shaun of the Dead

Guys, you’re in for a great month. The reason why I said that is because this month will be dedicated to the Edgar Wright movies that I have seen which he directed and wrote in. With that said, let’s take a look at one of the funniest comedies ever and the first in the “Cornetto Trilogy,” “Shaun of the Dead.”

The movie is a 2004 British comedy about oblivious loafers who basically revolve around the local pub. For them, the zombies are not a threat to them as they are for us, but an intrusion with their happy hour. When it becomes clear that London is filled with zombies, best friends Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) take a small group of survivors to the obvious monopoly: the Winchester, their local.

The paradox is that Shaun’s girlfriend Liz, played by Kate Ashfield, has been giving challenges, asking Shaun to decide between her and the pub. She lives with Di (Lucy Davis) and David (Dylan Moran), who thinks that in a decision Shaun would chose the pub over his girlfriend. When Shaun insists them to barrier themselves inside the Winchester, David is not encouraging: “Do you think his master plan is going to amount to anything more than sitting and eating peanuts in the dark?” This is not really fair, since Shaun does have a weapon: He uses his cricket bat to knock zombies on the head. Roger Ebert said in his review, “A cricket bat is to British movies as a baseball bat is to American movies: The weapon of choice for clueless heroes going downstairs to investigate a noise that was inevitably made by somebody packing a lot more than a bat.”

Ebert described, “Liz, Shaun and Ed the best friend have a relationship not unlike the characters played by Jennifer Aniston, John C. Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson in "The Good Girl" (2002).” Liz is smart and determined and wants to move forward in life, but Shaun is happy with his entry-level job in retail and his free time spent with Ed, watching TV and drinking beer – at the pub, mainly, or at home in a dash. When Liz complains that Ed is always around, Shaun says “he doesn’t have too many friends,” which is a common argument for not becoming one.

Ebert said, “"Shaun of the Dead," written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and directed by Wright, is a send-up of zombie movies, but in an unexpected way: Instead of focusing on the Undead and trying to get the laughs there, it treats the living characters as sitcom regulars whose conflicts and arguments keep getting interrupted by annoying flesh-eaters. In the first two or three scenes, as he crawls out of bed and plods down the street wrapped in the misery of his hangover, Shaun doesn't even notice the zombies.” Sure, they’re on the TV news, but who watches the news? For Shaun and Ed, the news is just there to comfort them that the set will be functioning when the football game begins.

The supporting characters include Shaun’s stepfather Phil (Bill Nighy) and mother Barbara (Penelope Wilton). Ebert described, “Nighy is that elongated character actor who looks as if he may have invaded Rhys Ifans' gene pool. He has a quality that generates instinctive sympathy, as in "Love Actually" (2002), where he played the broken-down rock star still hoping patiently in middle age for a comeback.” Here there’s something appealing about his response when he is bitten by a zombie. Once bitten, you have got to go. However, listen to Phil comfort them, “I ran it under the tap.”

“Shaun of the Dead” has its enjoyments, which are gentle but real. Ebert said, “I like the way the slacker characters maintain their slothful gormlessness in the face of urgent danger, and I like the way the British bourgeois values of Shaun's mum and dad assert themselves even in the face of catastrophe. There is also that stubborn British courage in times of trouble. "We never closed," bragged the big neon sign outside the Windmill strip club in Soho, which stayed open every night during the Blitz.” In this movie, the Winchester pub displays the same spirit.

Good thing the movie is about more than zombies. Ebert said, “I am by now more or less exhausted by the cinematic possibilities of killing them. I've seen thousands of zombies die, and they're awfully easy to kill, unless you get a critical mass that piles on all at once. George Romeo, who invented the modern genre with "The Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead," (1979) was essentially devising video game targets before there were video games: They pop up, one after another, and you shoot them, or bang them on the head with a cricket bat.” It’s much better to sit in the dark eating peanuts.

Don’t read this review, go out and see the movie for yourself. You will have an uproarious time laughing from beginning to end. Definitely see this, especially if you’re one of the zombie fans out there. It's one of the best comedies ever made and one of my absolute favorites.

Look out next week when we continue “Edgar Wright Month.”