Shaun Of The Dead

This is one of those films (we all have them, don't we) that I've been meaning to see for ages after loads of my friends have told me that it's great and that I'm bound to love it. I had the same (ironically) with 28 Days Later. And, just like 28 Days Later, I ended up being disappointed, although with Shaun, much less so than 28 Days Later, which I thought was pretty damn ropey.

Unlike Spaced (with which Shaun naturally has quite a bit in common, though it never touches Spaced's level), which has suffered from being far too under-hyped, I think this suffers from being a little too over-hyped. The characters are nice enough, and you certainly root for them, with the (deliberate) exception of Declan Moran's David, and the performances, if unspectacular, are dependable. Nick Frost is certainly the pick of the bunch and his character Ed provides the bulk of the laugh out loud moments. And therein lies the problem. There just aren't enough of them. Much of Shaun, just like Spaced, is brilliantly clever, full of in-jokes, asides and homages to films (including a nice little piss take of 28 Days... which echoes throughout) but it is light on truly hilarious moments and it just doesn't sustain a full 90 minute feature film. I still haven't grown up enough not to think that machine gun laugh aloud films like Caddyshack, Airplane, The Naked Gun, Dumb And Dumber and (in a sense) American Pie still rule the comedy film roost. The characters in Shaun just don't have that well-defined character that make the likes of Frank Drebbin and Bill Murray's beleaguered groundsman so effective over a sustained period. That said, I still think this is a British film to be proud of and huge kudos must go to Pegg, Frost and Edgar Wright (the director) for such a brave attempt, and, more importantly, making a film that's been so fucking popular and done so well. And even if you yourself might not always agree with the reason's behind a film's popularity, you can't say that it's not deserved.

B-