Editors at the old sci-fi anthology magazines used to say that the least-surprising surprise-ending story that would come in, by the wheelbarrow load, was the one starring the two wounded souls wandering post-apocalypse. It would always end with the same line: “And his name was Adam. And her name was Eve.”
“Warm Bodies”? Après-apocalypse, zombie falls for a still-living girl. And his name was Romeo, and her name was Juliet. (Actually, he’s “R,” as in “Rrrrr,” and she’s Julie.) There’s even a balcony scene, but if Shakespeare hadn’t come up with any dialogue more interesting than, “Julie, Julie — I came to see you!” his plays would have closed in Stratford-off-Avon.
Nicholas Hoult (the boy in “About a Boy”) plays the thoughtful zombie R (he can’t remember the rest of his name) who can’t really talk or help murdering humans. But (in internal narration only we can hear) he yearns to be more than just another dead man walking.
Munching on the brain of a young dude (Dave Franco), R downloads all the guy’s sweetest memories, especially of his girl, Julie (Teresa Palmer), whom R saves from other zombies and hides in a plane at the airport where all the “corpses,” as living people call them, wander all day. He plays her Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan songs, feeds her airline food and occasionally fends off attackers.
Gradually, a combination of R’s taking on the dead guy’s feelings and his fondness for Julie causes him to literally warm to her touch. She, in turn, doesn’t mind that he ate her boyfriend. Could opposites attract? Could love save the world? Could this script be any more trite?
As in “Silver Linings Playbook,” the plot is basically about how to take an outcast with a history of violence, poor social skills and a bad wardrobe and turn him into a fully realized human being with emotions and dreams and conversation — in other words, turn him into a girl. At least R doesn’t have to do any ballroom dancing, though Julie and her best friend (Analeigh Tipton) do spend a scene dolling him up with makeup, allegedly to make him look like a normal human. (If so — why the eyeliner?)
The movie is based on a novel by Isaac Marion, which in turn is based on a lot of other stuff, just as Palmer appears to be about a 90 percent accurate replica of Kristen Stewart. If there was an original idea in the script other than the one about the zombie’s favorite magazine (US Weekly), I missed it.
The leads are likeable enough, but the script reanimates “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” tactics — a monster story supposedly made hilarious by being told by a savvy high schooler. These lines aren’t even jokes, though, they’re just collisions of the brutal and the banal: “I know it’s really hard to meet guys right now, with the apocalypse and stuff.”
Marion and director-screenwriter Jonathan Levine (“50/50”) haven’t bothered to even work out the rules of their universe. R delivers cute lines about how boring it is to have to walk slowly, but when “Warm Bodies” is trying to do a scary chase scene, he runs. He complains that he and his best friend (Rob Corddry) can’t do anything except moan and stare awkwardly, but minutes later he’s talking to Julie in multiple-word sentences.
Other zombies let Julie walk among them without noticing, then later smell her living flesh and attack, but then they’re fooled by her acting like a zombie. So are they guided by smell or not? And why do the ruthless skeleton zombies, the “boneys,” attack the ordinary “corpses” only at the end, when the two groups have been coexisting at the airport? Do boneys eat dead flesh or not? If corpses can be reformed not just by falling in love, but merely by looking at pictures of people in love posted at the airport where they live, wouldn’t they have seen the images a long time ago?
I can hear the 14-year-olds: “Shut up! Can’t you see how beautiful R and Julie’s love is?” Despite the loads of my-soul-is-abloom emo on the soundtrack, no. I realize I’m siding with the crusty-dad figure played by John Malkovich, but it’s not that I disapprove of zombie-human dating. I just don’t like having my brain eaten by dead writing.