Shaun of the Dead movie review (2004)

Liz, Shaun and Ed the best friend have a relationship not unlike the characters played by Jennifer Aniston, John C. Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson in "The Good Girl" (2002). Liz is smart and ambitious and wants to get ahead in the world, but Shaun is happy with his entry-level job in retail and his leisure hours spent with Ed, watching the telly and drinking beer -- at the pub, preferably, or at home in a pinch. When Liz complains that Ed is always around, Shaun says "he doesn't have too many friends," which is often an argument for not becoming one.

"Shaun of the Dead," written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and directed by Wright, is a send-up of zombie movies, but in an unexpected way: Instead of focusing on the Undead and trying to get the laughs there, it treats the living characters as sitcom regulars whose conflicts and arguments keep getting interrupted by annoying flesh-eaters. In the first two or three scenes, as he crawls out of bed and plods down the street wrapped in the misery of his hangover, Shaun doesn't even notice the zombies. Sure, they're on the TV news, but who watches the news? For Shaun and Ed, the news functions primarily as reassurance that the set will be operating when the football match begins.

The supporting characters include Shaun's stepfather Phil (Bill Nighy) and mother Barbara (Penelope Wilton). Nighy is that elongated character actor who looks as if he may have invaded Rhys Ifans' gene pool. He has a quality that generates instinctive sympathy, as in "Love Actually" (2002), where he played the broken-down rock star still hoping patiently in middle age for a comeback. Here there's something endearing about his response when he is bitten by a zombie. It has been clearly established that such bites always lead to death and then rebirth as a zombie. Once bitten, your doom is sealed. But listen to Phil reassure them, "I ran it under the tap."