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	Shaun Of The Dead
	Edgar Wright Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Nicola Cunningham, Peter Serafinowicz 2004		The living dead and their frantic prey have never been as funny as they are in "Shaun of the Dead," a piece of British celluloid genius that combines horror, slapstick, social satire and romantic comedy in just the right balance to catapult it into the upper echelon of all-time great genre flicks. Other entries in the zombie-movie canon have been laced with humor; George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" skewered rampant consumerism as often as it dispatched its shambling, flesh-eating corpses. "Shaun of the Dead," co-written by director Edgar Wright and star Simon Pegg, is another thing entirely. Wright and Pegg bring the antic sensibilities of latter-day Brit-coms and classic English comedy ("The Goon Show," "Monty Python," etc.) to the formula Romero introduced in his low-budget 1968 shriekfest "Night of the Living Dead." In "Shaun of the Dead," an outbreak of zombies on the London streets is little more than an annoyance to underachieving, numbed-by-modern-life loser Shaun (Pegg) and his lazy best friend Ed (Nick Frost) — until Shaun realizes that his disenchanted girlfriend (Kate Ashfield), clueless mom (Penelope Wilton) and pejorative stepdad (Bill Nighy) need rescuing. At that point, love turns Shaun into an unlikely if inept hero. With cartoon gore and pop-culture references galore, "Shaun of the Dead" is unafraid to be downright goofy as it pays homage to Romero. It's uproarious.


	Sunday, November 17, 2024





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