Movie Review: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

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Big pushes for Fast Five and Disney's Prom for my movie money this weekend. Checking out Fandango to see other options and Dylan Dog: Dead of Night came up. Hadn't seen any previews for this one but read the description. Werewolves, vampires and zombies...OH MY! Why not give it a shot.

When I walked into my regular theater, I was only half way in when I got approached by one of the assistant managers. He wanted to inform me that they now have burgers, fries, fried cheese sticks and jalapeno poppers on the menu. Found out they have a new special oven and fry-o-later in back. They didn't have counter signage saying new items are available and the electronic boards showed the items at $4.50 or $7.50 in price, but they really didn't give an idea of the size of the serving. With Japan's influence in Hawaii I thought they might have one of the plastic models of the dish in the glass case to show you what you'd get. They didn't. If they price the new food like they do with soda, you'd get one, maybe two poppers for the $4.50. He was really excited about the new offerings, so maybe next time I'll try something since I now know that they have it.

The movie ran for 107 minutes and kept my attention. The werewolves and vampires were the bad guys with the zombies providing the comic relief. As typical in this genre of movie monster and things that go bump in the night there is an uneasy balance between all sides. The stability among the undead is maintained by one human who knows their secrets and knows that they really do exist as they try to mix in among the living in the Crescent City of New Orleans. Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh) has been chosen as the arbiter for the creatures of the night.

Dylan has been in retirement as balance keeper but gets dragged out of it when a local importer/exporter is killed. Looks like he and a large furry creature had an unexpected meeting and the man didn't survive the get together. Working with the man's daughter, Elizabeth (Anita Briem), they discover only one item has been taken. Now with Elizabeth in tow along with his friend Marcus (Sam Huntington) who recently acquired some special skills they traipse around the city to solve the mystery of the stolen object.

The werewolves control a meat packing plant. The vampires run a night club. The zombies do business in a specialized body parts shop. Pretty stereotypical when you think of the monster types. Ultimately when they find out why the item was stolen the fate of both the monster world and the human world hangs in the balance.

Routh delivers his lines with aplomb, a cool confidence of a man who knows how to deal with the dark forces as easily as an eight year old can put letters in a mail box. Marcus on the other hand is constantly flying off the handle as he must learn as Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. Ah, the struggles of being the go get it guy! Director Kevin Munroe struggled to find the right balance between taking our heroes seriously and taking them too seriously so that they crossed over into the land of campiness.

Hats off to the special effects and makeup guys for the monsters. They all looked pretty good! As an aside, why would a vampire in his right mind have southern facing windows in his bedroom? I'm just sayin!

Overall I don't think the movie will do well this weekend, maybe a late September or October release would have served them better. The flick was rated PG-13 for sequences of creature violence and action, language including some sexual references, and some drug material. Funny that for the drug material they don't distinguish between real world drugs and made up monster drugs! Again, I'm just sayin.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Zombieland

Zombieland....kind of reminds you of things like playing Candy Land, singing winter wonderland or dancing to Earth Wind and Fire's Boogie Wonderland, right? Well, sort of....

The world had been overrun by zombies. How? By a fast acting virus. These are not slow moving zombies, they move quick they too are fast acting! The narrator of the story goes by the name of Columbus played by Jessie Eisenberg of this year's Adventureland movie and he has his rules that he lives by in order to survive. Rule number one is Cardio! Once you see the undead, you understand why. Hmmm....I wonder if Jessie has any other "...land" movies coming up? He was good in Adventureland too.

Coming into the picture is Tallahassee played by Woody Herrelson who really, really wants to find Twinkies in and amongst all the quick moving dead. He meets Columbus and the two start traveling together and this is really what the movie is about, it's a buddy road movie just like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on The Road to Zanzabar. The zombies are just obstacles preventing them from getting to their destination which due to running into two sisters, Wichata and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) ends up getting changed from east coast destinations to Pacific Playland in California where zombies haven't taken over. Or so they hope. Going back to the names for a second...why names of cities? Because that way it can't get personal. Between the sisters, guess which of the two was the older one?

Like all good road pictures there are trust issues that need to be overcome. Issues between Columbus and Tallahassee and the guys vs the girls. As they work out those issues they end up in LA where they take refuge in a celebrity mansion before they make their final destination.

Along the way we the audience are brought into the movie with little interstitchels that made the movie fun. Columbus' rules were constantly being brought up and the rule was displayed on the screen. While they don't show you all 32, they show a good sampling. Kinda like tapas table service. You got to both read the rule and get a practical demonstration as to why the rule was important. Talking about ways to kill zombies or really not talking so much as seeing demonstrations are handed to you the audience. The scene in Los Angeles was funny. Lesson learned there is watching zombies killings is fun while dealing with real zombies is NOT. Notice the capitalization there.

What surprised me most was not the movie itself, but what was going on in the theater. The movie runs for 80 minutes and is rated R. So why in a movie rated R were there so many kids in the theater? It never ceases to amaze me seeing (and hearing) kids in these types of movies. You would think more parents would be concerned with showing their 6-10 year old kids about human sushi. I don't know what's going on in their own gray matter.

Overall it was a fun movie and would give it a double thumbs up for the appropriate age groups.