Just about everything you need to know about Shaun of the Dead, one of the brightest, funniest and most cheerfully revolting movies opening this fall, can be summed up by the movie's advertisements: It's a romantic comedy. With zombies.
The marriage of youthful relationship struggles with the flesh-eating living dead might seem inherently troubled. But in the playful hands of British co-writer-director Edgar Wright and co-writer-star Simon Pegg, Shaun of the Dead seems like a logical amalgam of genres.
A lot of that has to do with Wright and Pegg's roots. Avid fans of George Romero's classic zombie trilogy -- Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead -- the duo also created a British sitcom, Spaced, which focused on the young and listless. In one episode, Pegg's character finds himself trapped in the video game Resident Evil 2, confronting zombies. According to Wright, that was when the idea of Shaun was spawned.
The horror-comedy furthers the pair's professed goal to create antidotes to a "chocolate-box view of London," as typified by the films of Richard Curtis (Love Actually), whom Wright and Pegg seem to casually regard as the Antichrist.
They're not too fond of English sitcoms, either. "We wrote Spaced because we were sick of those sort of twentysomething sitcoms where everyone is really beautiful and hangs out in wine bars and talks about sex all the time," Pegg says, referring to the BBC hit Coupling, which was unsuccessfully remade last year by NBC. "If you've watched Coupling, you should really watch Spaced, because it will take the nasty taste out of your mouth," Pegg adds, as Wright laughs. (Spaced, meanwhile, seems unlikely to ever be released on DVD in North America, due to the issue of music clearances.)
Like Spaced, Shaun of the Dead is set in the suburbs of North London. It follows a few very eventful days in the life of Shaun (Pegg), a 29-year-old struggling to stave off the boredom of his retail job and the gradual collapse of his relationship with Liz (Kate Ashfield). Liz has grown tired of Shaun's inability to grow up, and his insistence on spending most of his time at a seedy pub with his preternaturally lazy best friend, Ed (Nick Frost).
But these mundane problems take a back seat when London is overtaken by flesh-eating zombies, and Shaun and Ed find themselves in the unlikely roles of crusading heroes.
