What are critics saying about Warm Bodies, the made-in-Montreal rom-zom-com opening Friday across Canada?
Sherri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter said Warm Bodies “places heart over horror and romantic teen angst over sharp social commentary.” She wrote: “The low gore quotient and emphasis on young love might disappoint genre purists, but for those open to the idea of a gently goofy mash-up, the film is strong on atmosphere and offers likably low-key, if somewhat bland, charms.”
In the New York Times, reviewer Mahnohla Dargis opined: “Warm Bodies is effectively a riff on every teenage romance ever told. Boy or, in this case, zombie meets girl. Zombie loses girl. Zombie – well, you know the rest, though here the familiar balance comes with human tartare, screams and the unsettling image of John Malkovich as the leader of the seemingly last people on Earth. Warm Bodies is an improbable romance sweetened with appealing performances.”
Calling the movie “clever,” Chris Knight of Postmedia lauds the performance of Nicholas Hoult. “This is Hoult’s show, and he steals it admirably, slowly evolving from a shambolic, monosyllabic shuffler to a reliable love interest with enough physical dexterity to kiss the girl.”
Bill Brownstein at The Gazette (who describes the movie as “a whimsical, charming love story”) credits Warm Bodies for showcasing Montreal. “OK, so our tourist board probably won’t be sending DVDs of Warm Bodies to would-be visitors, but there is some civic pride to be had in seeing that at least some folks appreciate the apocalyptic splendour of our Big O, Mirabel Airport and Turcot Interchange.”
NPR’s Bob Mondello is less enthusiastic about the flick. “There’s not a lot of gore – or even suspense – in Warm Bodies, and the script plays fast and loose with the zombie rules invented by Night of the Living Dead creator George Romero.” But, Mondello added, director Jonathan Levine “finds strategies in Warm Bodies to make what has long been considered a deathless tale undead in a new way.”
Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel found Warm Bodies to be “deadly slow, as if Levine was worried that teenagers might miss the jokes, the allusions and the ‘message’ if he went too fast.”
Michael O’Sullivan of The Washington Post wrote: “Cute without being especially clever, Warm Bodies is almost as pallid and as brain-dead as its zombie antihero. It’s less funny and self-aware than Shawn of the Dead, less swooningly romantic than Twilight (to which it bears strong similarities) and less scary than pretty much anything else out there with zombies in it. Fans of The Walking Dead can keep moving; there’s nothing to see here.”
Syndicated film critic Richard Roeper is hot for Warm Bodies. “This is a bloody fresh twist on the most popular horror genre of this century, with none-too-subtle echoes of a certain star-crossed romance that harks back to a certain bard who placed a certain young Romeo under a certain balcony,” he wrote.
“Warm Bodies is a well-paced, nicely directed, post-apocalyptic love story with a terrific sense of humor and the, um, guts to be unabashedly romantic and unapologetically optimistic. Warm Bodies is terrific entertainment.”
Click here to go behind the scenes as Montreal journalist Eric Cohen plays undead on the set of Warm Bodies. You can also watch the trailer below:
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