Warm Bodies: A zombified Nicholas Hoult meets a girl. With a nekkid Rob Conddrey

  

Link to the nekkid Rob, and maybe some Nicholas Hoult

I'm going to have to stop this "Give me four movies to select from" strategy for Movie Night.  Last night my choices were:

Stand by Me: Same-sex love among homophobic kids vanishes when they grow up and get married. Geez.

Bad Hair: A horror movie about hair care products?

All of Us Strangers: Bereaved gay gay falls in love with a ghost? F*k the Sadness.

Warm Bodies.  Nicholas Hoult, on the icon, was cute, and how could a movie about zombies go wrong?

A zombie (Nicholas) narrates. He can't remember his name, but later his human girlfriend names him R, as in Romeo or ARRR!  His limited cognitive ability means that he doesn't remembr what happened, sparing us scenes about the origin of the zombie Apocalypse. 

R spends most of his time plodding around the Montreal-Trudeau airport with the other zombies, hanging out with his friend MMM (Rob Conddry) -- all they do is grunt at each other, but isn't that what living guys do, har har -- and filling his airplane-lair with knicknacks that he scavenged.  

Next door, behind a wall much too high to be even slightly believable, the humans live in a refugee camp and scrounge for food. Except for the evil President, who lives in a palace.

Some of the town teenagers, including the President's daughter Julie -- Juliet, get it? --  and her boyfried Perry -- go beyond the wall to scrounge for medical supplies, and the zombies attack. R sees Julie, and gets the most exaggeratedly corny "love at first sight" look that they ever taught you not to do in acting school.  He notices Perry, and gets rid of the competition by eating him.  

But in this world, when you eat someone, even a tiny piece, you absorb their memories.  R absorbs Perry's memories, all of which involve Julie: falling in love when they are toddlers, their first kiss, their first sexual experience, their declaration of love, and so on ad infinitum. 

Through the entire movie, I thought Perry was being played by Zac Efron.  No, it's someone named Dave Franco, who could be Zac's identical twin.  Seriously, they look exactly alike. 

The other teens just hide until the zombies leave, but R tricks Julie into thinking that he has to save her.  He takes her to his airplan, and they proceed to fall in love.

Eventually Julie wants to return to human society, mainly because there's almost nothing left to eat at the airport, so R tries to sneak her out.  The other zombies want to attack,but he holds her hand and -- get this -- they instantly calm down. "Oh, you're in love.  Why didn't you say so?  Even brain-dead zombies understand that heterosexual romance is the most important thing in the universe.  Go on through."

More heterosexism after the break

So Julie and R head to human society, where they have to do a Romeo-and-Juliet thing with her zombie-hating father -- the zombies killed his wife. Heterosexuals all the way down.  

 But not to worry, Julie's love gradually turns R human again.  Gee, why didn't they use that during COVID?  Who cares about masking -- just find a heterosexual romance, and you'll be fine.

But it gets worse.  Back in the airport, the zombies stare at an ad which involve a man and a woman holding hands.  They flash back to holding hands with their own heterosexual partners, back before the apocalypse...and start to heal!  You don't even need a heterosexual romance, you just need to remember one!

Left: According to a nude celebrity site, this is a young Rob Corddry, naked, wearing Hulk hands.

And an older Rob doing gay porn.

After everyone heals and a new integrated society emerges, we still need a kicker -- by which I mean a kick in the balls.  R's zombie buddy M meets a human girl, and they walk off, sharing an umbrella in the rain.

So what have we learned?  Heteosexual romance is the meaning of life.  The only thing men are put on Earth for is to find and win The Girl.  The Eternal Feminine draws us upward. It even cures zombies!

Beefcake: No

Gay Characters: "Gay" not only doesn't exist, it is beyond the boundary of what can be imagined.

Gay Teenager: Nicholas Hoult played a lot of gay characters as a teenager. I guess he saw Stand By Me: same-sex loves must be abandoned when you grow up.

My Grade: ARRR.