DEAD ZONE

Look at that cast: what could go wrong?

Jarmusch zombie comedy needs infusion

In some circles, the words "Jim Jarmusch zombie comedy" would be all the PR you'd need to sell a movie. It's irresistible: the hipster auteur of Stranger Than Paradise, Coffee And Cigarettes, Ghost Dog, and Only Lovers Left Alive making a meal of the flesh-eating dead horror apocalypse genre.

Especially when you learn the cast includes such longtime Jarmush stock company stalwarts as Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, Iggy Pop, Carol Kane, and Tom Waits.

But while it looks so promising on paper, the onscreen result needs a little more meat on its bones.

It would be shameless punning to employ words like "stilted" and "catatonic" to describe a movie about reanimated dead people. (That's the point, right?) Certainly, everybody involved seems to be having a swell time, from actors playing both the living and the dead (often getting to segue from one to the other), and Jarmusch himself, so tickled that he lingers over every shot; you can almost hear him chuckling off-camera.

Murray and Driver: deadpan

But for the audience, not so much. Sure, there are fleeting moments of droll humor in the deadpan (sorry) byplay between Murray and Driver as small town cops trying to fight off the zombie menace.  Throwaway gags about zombies staggering around, moaning for "Cof-fee," "Xanax," and "Wi-Fi," also occasionally hit the mark.

But be prepared to endure long, long stretches of ennui between unsubtle moments that drive home the message, and name-that-zombie celebrity-spotting.

The oft-repeated explanation is that "polar fracking" by stupid humans has knocked the Earth out of whack and opened the floodgates for the zombie apocalypse — one way for Mother Nature to get even.

Point taken. But a bit more honed outrage (or at least funnier satire) might have served better.
(Read more in this week's Good Times)