Fido

This one was recommended by some of my eFriends.  They were surprised that I liked “28 Days/Weeks Later” but that I didn’t really care for the “Dawn Of The Dead” remake.  They just don’t know me well enough yet I guess.  Being a remake, “DotD” had to live up to certain standards and although I think it was a decent movie, it wasn’t good enough to merit the effort.

But I digest…             (inside joke)

“Fido” is a zombie movie comedy.  Imagine “Leave it to Beaver” meets “Dawn of the Dead”.  I’ll give you a second to come to that special place in your brain that says, “No!!!, no! no!”.

It is the early 1950′s and “space dust” has come down to earth and now all the dead walk in search of human flesh.  Lucky for us, ZomCon built fences and created special collars that neutralize the zombie’s thirst for blood.  Now the Zombie Wars are over and everyone has zombie servants, mowing the grass, serving dinner and Mr. Theopolis has a zombie named Tammi that…  Well, we’ll just let you use your imagination…

Enter the Robinson family.  Father is a golfing workaholic and the mother is the perfect June Cleaver.  Little Timmy is kind of a spaz and gets bullied at school.  The new family just moved in across the street and they have six zombie servants!  Their dad is chief of ZomCon security Mr. Bottoms.  Mom is tired of being the only one on the block without a zombie.  She brings home a zombie and dad hates it.  He’s afraid of zombies because he had to kill his own father when he turned into a zombie.  He is obsessed with death and funerals where they bury the head separately.

Dad relents and lets mom and Timmy keep the zombie as long as he’s chained up in the back yard when he’s not doing chores.  Timmy is trying everything he can do to get attention from his father but dad would rather golf than hang out with Timmy.  So he goes off to the park and he is attacked by the bullies.  Along comes Timmy’s new zombie and saves him from a beating.  Timmy starts to look up to the zombie as a father figure because they wash the car together and play catch; all the stuff Timmy’s dad is too busy for.  Timmy’s dad is also too busy for Timmy’s mom and she’s starting to flirt with the zombie as well.  Timmy dubs the zombie “Fido”.

While playing catch the ball goes into the bushes and Fido goes to get it.  His collar malfunctions and he ends up eating the nosey old lady next door.  Timmy realizes they’ll take Fido away so he buries the old lady in the park, but not before she also zombified another person.  One loose zombie leads to two loose zombie which leads to four, eight and so on…  The bullies know the truth and try to kill Timmy with his own zombie by tying him to a tree and dismantling Fido’s collar.  Their plan backfires and the bullies are zombified by Fido.  But Fido never tries to kill Timmy, even with the collar out of commission.  We get the great scene of Timmy sending Fido for help and when Fido gets to the mother she asks, “What is it boy, is Timmy in trouble?”  It was transparent but still funny.  Something about replacing the picture perfect collie with a six foot flesh-rotting zombie was just funny enough to make me laugh.

Mom and Fido show up in time to save Timmy but back at home they have discovered that Timmy was the cause of the new zombie outbreak.  ZomCon decides to let Timmy off with a warning but they take Fido away to be “put to sleep”.

Timmy finds out that Fido was actually taken to work in a ZomCon factory.  He sneaks in and tries to rescue him but Mr. Bottoms stops him and puts Timmy outside the fence into the “Wild Zone”.  Mom, Fido and Dad show up and are in time to save Timmy but the dad gets shot and Mr. Bottoms gets turned into a zombie.

The movie closes with Mr. Robinson’s funeral (Head casket please) and then a backyard barbecue where we see the little girl leading her new zombie dad on a leash.  Fido is now the father of the family and they all live happily ever after.

Was it a great movie, was it art?  No, but it was funny.  Billy Connolly played Fido and everyone seems to be talking about that as if it were important.  He has NO speaking lines, how funny could he be?  He walked like a zombie, the makeup and hair department made him look like a zombie, he acted like a zombie.  But the face behind the makeup was barely recognizable and he never said anything funny.  Carrie-Anne Moss as the mother was played well and she’s attractive as always.

All the really funny parts are all one-liners.  They aren’t very funny out of the context of the movie but they made me laugh a few times.  Such as watching an ad for ZomCon’s new heart monitor;

“Sure the elderly are friendly but can they really be trusted?”  Cut to a grandfather playing with his granddaughter and having a heart-attack, “Help, Grandpa’s fallen and he’s getting up!”

It was worth checking out.  Not terribly great cinema but better than a lot of the crap out there.

6 of 11 Skulls