Shaun of the Dead (2004)
I’ll stop doing it when you stop laughing.
THE SUMMARY: An electronics salesman with a dead-end job loses his girlfriend as a very cute zombie apocalypse breaks out, and he learns important lessons about discipline and purpose as almost all of his friends and family die, but it’s okay because they stay re-animated friends anyway. A generally enjoyable movie with many important philosophical points, but the slapstick wears a little thin for me. It is British humor, after all - a notorious contradiction in terms.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER TONY: When the uneventful life of a salesman and his mates are met by the zombie apocalypse... Sometimes English humor makes you laugh in a way you did not know you were capable of.
THE BEST:
Expect value from your friends: ‘Does it make your life easier having someone around who’s more of a loser than you are?!’ It’s one of my favorite lines in the movie, but not because it’s some clever comedy quip. It’s because we should all ask ourselves this question frequently.
Pete, the roommate, has had enough of Ed’s uselessness and insists that Shaun demand more of him, and the entire movie is an exercise in that effort. Shaun learns that enabling the degeneracy of your friends is not actually being a good friend - in fact, it’s a failure to help someone close to you. You’re not a bad guy if you insist that your friends provide value to their own lives and yours. You’re just a guy with standards.
Personally, my life got significantly better when I started dropping friends who were dead weight. They take many forms: friends without direction, friends with destructive habits, or worst of all, friends who siphon off you - your money, your energy, or whatever else you have.
It doesn’t mean you have to be a dick about these ‘friend breakups.’ You can cold-turkey quit them if you wish. You can also have a conversation about them, as in most cases I have, in the hope of giving that friend an opportunity for improvement or at least an understanding as to why you’re parting ways.
Whatever the outcome, one of the harsher lessons of my adulthood is this: your friends are much more replaceable than you think they are. Just because you’ve been friends since junior high doesn’t mean the friendship is valuable today, or that there isn’t a better friend for you next door if you search for him. Always expect and seek value if you hope to achieve value in your life.
Contribute value to them too: But of course, you are the other side of that deal, too. You can’t expect value of others and provide none yourself. In this case, Shaun is giving nothing to his girlfriend Liz in terms of future or purpose. It’s just an indefinite timeline of living like college kids, even though they’re both well beyond that stage. It’s crucial, every day, to think actively about how you are providing value to yourself, to your family, and to your friends. Everyone needs a day off, sure - but if you aren’t thinking that way almost every day, you’ll become the sort of couch surfer everyone wants to get away from. Expect value, and provide value.
If the zombie apocalypse actually hit, would you even notice? Would you already be a zombie anyway?: One of the better subtleties in Shaun is the way society at large is already acting like zombies, even before they become zombies. Walking slowly, dead in the eyes, and performing repetitive tasks in an absolutely soulless way - they’re so ‘zombified’ already, that when the actual outbreak hits, it’s not even obvious to Shaun and others for some time.
There’s an important point here: it takes deliberate effort to avoid becoming a zombie, so work hard toward giving your life value, purpose, and by extension, excitement. For the vast majority of us, that means family, marriage, children, and a home. Toward that purpose, you’ll meet even the most mundane tasks with a persistent energy, because there’s a big future beyond them.
Don’t become a zombie. Start building a future today, so you have something to look forward to and work toward. Without it, every day is just the same as yesterday. Something to get over with until you die. And then undie and do it all over again.
Accurate British self-defense methods: Old records, an ash tray, a cricket bat - all that was missing was the narwhal tusk! I know that these weapon choices are intentional for comedic effect, and of course the lever-action rifle is deployed later, but it does raise a serious cultural question - wouldn’t it be better to have a gun? I can already hear it now: ‘Oi mate, ya can’t be seriously arguin’ tha’ a bloody zombay film shows we all need guns.’ Sure, zombies are an unlikely scenario. But what about say, foreign invasion, Putin-style? What about immigrant gangs scooping up young women? What about a jihadist slashing bystanders with a knife? Oh right - we have the tusk for that.
The point is of course this movie picked silly weapons for fun, but in a real survival situation, do you want slapstick, or dead enemies?
Pete gets it.
Who are the real zombies?
Oi! At least me school ain’t a foirin’ range!
THE WORST:
Slapstick and sincerity are a difficult mix: Shaun’s slapstick is a double problem for me. Firstly because it’s just not all that creative. If you’ve seen one of this movie’s zombie deaths, you’ve really seen them all. Shaun contributes little to the creativity of what is largely a ‘dead’ genre (though in fairness, Shaun predates The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, and other more recent shows and movies that actually killed the undead genre, over and over again).
But even the non-zombie slapstick is tiresome too. Haha, he used a child’s trampoline to jump over a fence, an unlikely feat for a man of his age lacking athleticism. Haha, a dart is stuck in his head, an unfortunate consequence of a poor weapon choice. Haha, he blew his own mum’s brains out. Fine - that one was decent. But the fire extinguisher bit was downright disrespectful to Brian Sicknick.
It’s not just about a tired genre with tired bits for me though - the second problem is that this comedy-horror blend is schizophrenic. Some things are clearly supposed to be funny - the record-tossing bit, for example. Some things are clearly supposed to be serious - Shaun mercy-killing his mum, for example. But the blend makes some things less clear. David’s gruesome disembowelment - is that supposed to be funny or scary? Same for Ed’s death, or Philip’s mea culpa before he dies - are these supposed to be funny, or sincere? With movies that try for both, you often get neither. The gags cut against the serious parts, and the serious parts cut against the gags. Pick one, and do it well.
A somewhat hurried ending: The movie hits its climax and then it just… ends. With perfect timing for Shaun and Liz, the military swoops in and saves the day, and the movie cuts forward to a return to peace time where the zombies are still around, but managed in a safe and controlled way. How was the outbreak contained? Why doesn’t the virus spread under these co-existing conditions? And if it’s only six months later, how was all of society rebuilt so quickly?
It’s actually under three minutes of story wrap-up time, and while I generally appreciate brevity, this is a radically quick shift from apocalyptic chaos to peace and order restored, with minimal explanation for how or why.
THE RATING: A laugh or two, a thought provoked or two, and a janky tooth or two - the complete British comedy experience. Shaun is more in the 3.5 range for me - decent, but not legendary - but I’m feeling generous and of course, half-Wickies round up.
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NEXT WEEK: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
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