A bite of fun
I should be asleep now, or at least reading myself in that direction, but I wanted to make some quick comments about one of this weekend's new releases, Shaun of the Dead.
One of my sons and I caught Shaun late this afternoon, and it was a good time. The filmmakers have a fun sense of humor, but it's also very much a zombie movie. Or, one could see it simply as a romantic comedy with zombies as a critical plot element to effect change. Either way, a real affection for Romero's films is in evidence, at least the first two, as elements of both - especially 1978's Dawn of the Dead - are echoed in this film.
It flirts with elements of a British Dumb & Dumber, too, but only just so; the two, central buddy characters are often goofy, but it's much more in the vein of lifelong friends who are keeping each other in perpetual childhood than their simply being over the top and under the bar morons. The laughs are genuine, the pacing's good, and the characters are generally worth the time to know, rather than simply being the two-dimensional, parody characters lesser filmmakers would have been satisfied with.
Sadly, if the attendance at the 4:30 showing is any indication it's not doing well this weekend. There were perhaps 10 people in the theatre. Still, 4:30 on a sunny Sunday afternoon isn't likely to be a peak time for this sort of film.
A check of this weekend's box office results tell me that the film is running down in the #8 spot, with a take of $3.258 million. On the face of it that's a pittance - and in the end the face of it is all that will be recorded - but I also quickly noted that it's listed as being at only 607 theaters nationwide, while every other film in the top 9 is in 2000+ theaters. Rather stiff distribution competition.
Anyway, I wanted to get a recommendation out there, for what it's worth. The film has no immediate star power to draw on, so even with generally positive reviews from critics and enthusiasm from the likes of Peter Jackson, Shaun is facing an uphill battle for good box office and could be dismissed by many potential audience members as too much a horror genre film if word doesn't get around that it has things to offer to more than a narrow audience.
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