and American pride...but which ones are the true Americans the zombies or the living?

but not as grate at Battelstar Galactia maybe

Are racist, pure and simple.

This movie looks like good, stupid fun.

just as long as it's stupid.

the funny part was, we saw it in a mall cinema much like the one in the movie.

after the film was over, most of the people who had seen it (ourselves included) moaned and staggered around the mall on the way back to their automobiles...

Night Of The Living Dead is still pretty damn scary today - that's saying something for a 40+ year old movie.

Are the Zombies really allegorical characters who represent teabaggers?

Well, if they aren't they should be!

Sorry Bill, but the Zombies are smarter than the teabaggers

Zombies are a metaphor for the Jews.

Nobody thinks of Jews as mindless. Evil, maybe--but mindless, never. If you want to take a stab at comedy, avoid inapt metaphors.

i saw one at the store

According to the Swedish media.

I would have laughed. They are just about stupid and crazy enough to say something like that in Saudi Arabia. But the Swedes? You want to hang the anti-semite tag on the Swedes? Because you are enraged that they run a boring social democracy and it doesn't lead to starvation in the streets and an invasion by the Visigoths? That's lame.

Probably zombies in malls, too....

::insert joke about brain-eating zombies starving to death in Red State Ammurika here...::

From the sound of it as per your description, the main reason the group has the luxury of experiencing the easygoing comraderie is because they're only facing zombies of the "slow" persuasion. As long as the ammo holds out and the sites of engagement are not only "force multipliers" but offer defensive positions capable of maintaining ones non-infected status; it's a one-sided war of attrition against the lumbering hordes.

But if their adversaries were of the fast moving variety, say along the lines of later incarnations of Romero's living dead (who even managed to process new information and respond accordingly - i.e. "learn"), or those infected with bio-agents of the sort in "28 Days Later" or the "Resident Evil" franchise, then their leisurely approach and "survival" would be pretty much incompatible.

Built around those plot points, the thin veneer of civilization would quickly peel away and the human survivors would reveal all their selfish, cowardly, backstabbing, self-defeating, self-destructive tendencies for all to see. In that scenario, the noble among us are often the first to go as overriding the instinct for self-preservation tends to put one at greater risk. Even if mutual benefit is derived for a time from cooperation; the most devious and Machiavellian will at some point choose to throw the other under the bus when it's advantageous to do so.

Now a film exploring *that* aspect of the human condition would have an opportunity to shed some light on the pros and cons of that particular survival strategy as well possibly offer a realistic scenario in countering that human tendency towrds self-interest over everything else.

We are all, unsurprisingly, descended from the most aggressive, exploitive, and opportunistic species and individuals within the species that emerged triumphant by vanquishing the competition with a ruthless savagery that the competition either didn't possess or possessed to an insufficient degree.

Considering some of the unprecedented threats we face today and the speed at which society can be returned to a level of primitive subsistance, the evolutionary model that distilled our DNA to produce what we are today might possibly be outdated. Failing to cooperate and rejecting altruism and sacrifice for the greater good might be just what ultimately dooms us all. For the life of me I have no idea what could be done about it, as it is the so-called weakest links that, especially considering their numbers, pose the greatest risk by their very nature. The tendency to reject the collective good as not being suitably beneficial for the individual in theory or practice means that a smaller subset of the group would wind up carrying the weight for the lot and their losses at some point would become unsustainable.

The movie sounds like some good, clean (or infected) fun, but the opposition as described seems not to take them out of the novice player level and onto the level where the difficulty of the challenges require that every single move be done correctly, at the right time, is properly coordinated with the other team memebers, and that with a continued focus and enough lucky breaks, allows them to progress to the next level, for as long as it takes to neutralize the threat.

Your typical road trip that ain't.

This movie was one of the funniest things I've seen in a really long time. Unexpected things are continually happening and the characters are all interesting (particularly Woody's character). It was nice to see Abigail Breslin in something so fun too, after a string of kind of sappy movies.

It's kind of a mixture between a road trip movie and Shawn of the Dead. Every one of our party of 10 loved it. Awesome, hilarious, cleverly written fun.

& it's good wholesome fun. the opening title/credit sequence is funny & artful at the same time. the movie walks the line between gore & humor quite well, and a 'certain someone' gives an absolutely hilarious performance about 2/3 of the way through. it's well known that zombie movies are typically "about something", and Zacharek notes correctly that this one is about bonhomie, or family, and learning to accept the issues of one's closest fellow travelers.

if i have one problem with the movie it is that columbus, who survives by strictly adhering to a list of do's & dont's, never seems to care that the windows in the car are always down- when everybody knows that zombies love to come through car windows & windows buy you valuable time to get the keys out of your pocket or root around in the glove compartment for a weapon. seems that would be a top five zombie-survival tactic.

this movie shoots to the top ten of my zombie movie list, and is on par with shawn of the dead for humor & craftsmanship. it will go on a permanent double-feature status with shawn on my dvd player beginning next halloween.

by the way - Manohla Dargis, of the NYT, is apparently a moron. the brief review she wrote in friday's times was bizarre & completely off base. ignore it - & her - & see this movie.