Warm Bodies

It's pretty miserable to watch Nicholas Hoult play a zombie -- at least at first. In Warm Bodies, he plays a disgusting, undead sad-sack who calls himself R because he can't remember his full name. He's dirty, drools blood, has crooked teeth and shuffles around really slowly.

R still has a heart as well as a brain, which is how we're treated to his pithy, post-adolescent narration. And for half an hour, it's annoying. We have to watch him stagger around like a beaten-up drunk, grunting at his one friend (Rob Corddry) for communication, while we listen to his overly self-aware interior analysis.

When R falls in love with an uninfected girl named Julie (Teresa Palmer, who looks distractingly like Kristen Stewart) while he's eating the brains of her boyfriend (an unimpressive Dave Franco -- sorry bro, we still haven't forgotten you peed your pants in Superbad), it doesn't feel like the movie's getting any better.

And then ... it just does. R is getting better, so as he slowly becomes able to muscle out parts of his personality for Julie to see, the narration and overall premise of the movie become more credible. He tells Julie he prefers records over MP3's because of sound quality and he's able to channel his feelings through an almost hilariously literal selection of songs for her (loved hearing "Hungry Heart" and especially Guns n' Roses's "Patience," but you're really not leaving much open to interpretation with those choices). It all plays out basically how you'd expect, but it's cute, and that's more than I can say for almost any other zombie film. GRADE: B-

(Rated PG-13 for zombie violence and some language)

Bullet to the Head





Follow Pete McQuaid on Twitter @sweetestpete and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ sweetestpete. Check whatdoUwannado.com tomorrow for reviews of Identity Thief and Side Effects.