World War Z

So I finally got around to seeing World War Z. I've been wanting to see it for a long time despite the lackluster reviews ever since I heard they were making this beautiful book by Max Brooks (Mel's son) into a movie years ago. I loved the book with a passion as I'm a fan of many things zombie related and I remember feeling a pang of anger to know that they had taken Max's premise and title and turned it into a film that had very little whatsoever to do with his book. Damn you, movie studios.

For those of you that haven't read the book, not only is it one of my favorite reads period, it's presented to the reader as an oral history of the zombie war. Meaning that the war is over, and the people the author interviews are fellow survivors who were, to use a military term, "in the shit." The book tells the stories of these survivors as they tell it themselves, with viewpoints ranging from high ranking military officers and special forces soldiers to regular everyday people to children.

The movie is nothing fucking like that.

The zombies do pile themselves on top of one another in the book like on the movie poster, but that's about where the similarities end. Okay, I'm going to stop bitching about how the movie's not like the book since you can read about that on a million different websites.

My only other gripe is that the movie is rated PG-13. Are you fucking kidding me? A PG-13 zombie movie. I actually didn't know it was PG-13 until the day I went to see it, and I might have Pirate Bay'd this one had I known that, rather than paying $8 to see it at the movie theater. And that was a matinee ticket.

When I watch a zombie movie, I expect to see a list of things that I have prepared below:

1. LOTS of blood and gore.
2. People getting eaten.
3. Someone will kill his or herself, or have someone kill them after they become infected, and not do it off camera like a bitch. *SPOILER ALERT* The guy who kills himself is a Navy SEAL, I think he's enough of a badass to do it in front of us.
4. A boob or two couldn't hurt, as in the later George Romero films.
5. *SEMI SPOILER ALERT* I don't like storybook endings for zombie films. The exception is 28 Days Later, and while it is a good ending, it's not exactly what I would call storybook.
6. Grotesque, maybe even pointless violence that looks somewhat fake and maybe even laughable.

On all of these points World War Z disappoints. Most of the killing, violence, and zombie transformations are done off camera. When I think zombie film, I think Day of the Dead. Or 28 Days Later. Both of these have all of these, though I don't think there's any boobs in 28. That being said, they should have titled this film "Brad Pitt in a Zombie Movie" and left it at that. By itself, I'd probably give the movie a C. With the expectations added in and the disappointment factor, I'm dropping it to a D. The story of the movie kept me interested, though I felt it was drawn out. It was a two hour movie that could have been done better in an hour and a half. An okay (but nothing special) movie by itself, but in no way worthy of being named after the book.