Fido.

"The rom-zom-com - the romantic zombie comedy - spearheaded by Shaun of the Dead continues to build momentum with Fido, a candy-colored satire of the Leave It to Beaver 50s, in which the Eisenhower era is reimagined as a macabre world populated by the living dead," writes Michael Joshua Rowin at indieWIRE. "Writer-director Andrew Currie demonstrates equal affection for George A Romero and Lassie, and he mates these cultural opposites with a clever premise, which, before eventually running out of steam, offers some genuinely ingenious delights."

Updated through 6/15.

"You really want to like Fido, but boy does the movie make it difficult," sighs Matt Singer at IFC News, where he and Alison Willmore present "Zombie Metaphors: An Incomplete History."

"Fido never clearly defines its allegorical story's actual allegorical focus, instead mining its tale about the relationship shared by little Timmy Robinson (K'Sun Ray) and his new zombie pet Fido (Billy Connolly, riffing on Day of the Dead's Bub) for stagnant jokes aimed at Douglas Sirk aficionados," writes Nick Schager at Slant.

"Not much brain activity, alas, in this Canadian indie," sighs Rob Nelson in the Voice.

"Fido is entertaining," writes Marcy Dermansky. "The gentle little film won't, however, blow your mind, or redefine our notion of zombies: they remain stupid and hungry for brains and certainly unwelcome in the home."

Earlier: "Sundance. Fido."

Update: "[I]t's tough not to imagine how much better the results could have been if Currie had taken the material to the next level and given Fido a purpose beyond homage-heavy representations of multiple issues," writes Eric Kohn at the Reeler. "Witty it may be, but the metaphor dies before the first act and never gets resurrected."

Updates, 6/15: "Mr Currie and his collaborators don't push their slave-master allegory far," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "[U]nlike Mr Romero or the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, where the living are so zombie-like they don't initially notice the undead, the filmmakers remain content to graze and to nibble, skimming the surface rather than sinking in deep."

"Scottish comedian-actor Connolly has the real trench work though, giving what must be cinema's first fully realized zombie portrayal," writes Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times. "Yes, he nails the growls with expected rabidity and reacts to a playful spray from a garden hose with hilariously stifled joy, but when reacting to the perfumed scent of [Carrie-Anne] Moss's lonely housewife, Connolly subtly suggests all that the undead have lost. It's a surprising moment in a mostly jokey film, but it indicates as much as the cultural satire and gleamingly effective period décor that, ironically enough, there's still a lot of life left in the zombie flick."

John Constantine interviews Connolly for Nerve.

Posted by dwhudson at June 14, 2007 7:25 AM