At the cinema: Warm Bodies

I read Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion last year on a ten hour flight from London to San Francisco. It started out quite good, then became just okay, and then ended a bit abrupt and a little too tidily for my taste. It certainly helped the time pass though. In a weird way, it's one of those books where I almost think it was meant to be a film; I mean, it is told from the prospective of a zombie, so you can imagine there are a few narrative difficulties there.

I went to the cinema and saw this by myself (because I actually really love going to the cinema by myself for some reason), and just as I suspected, I found the film version more enjoyable. Seeing the memories that R does when he's eating brains (brrrrains) was very effective, and because I'm a softie, I almost started tearing up because look at this sweet boy riding his bicycle in a meadow and he doesn't even know what's coming and what's going to happen to him and the light on his face and he's smiling and he's so happy... (this is what's it's like inside my brain). And I thought that both Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer were well cast, and though this film does have a few silly sappy moments, they played it well so it wasn't any more silly or sappy than it needed to be. The CGI left something to be desired (not to mention the opening credit titles, which look like something from a youtube video), but ah well.

The audience I saw it with seemed to like it as well, laughing and awwing in turn, which probably made me enjoy the film even more. And I kept hearing exclamations of "He's so cute!" about zombie Hoult, because apparently the way he groans and staggers is adorable (it is), so there's always that.