Review: Little Monsters

Set in Australia, failed heavy metal musician Alexander England has recently moved in with his sister (Kat Stewart) and her young son (Diesel La Torraca) after his girlfriend (Nadia Townsend) cheats on him. England becomes sweet on the kid’s sweet teacher Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o) and somehow wrangles his way into replacing a substitute teacher on a field trip to the zoo. Once there, England, Miss Caroline, and the children are set upon by raging zombies that have been born out of some kind of experiments at a local facility run by the US military. Josh Gad plays a craven, out-of-control American children’s TV host visiting Australia and appearing at the zoo. 

No, not the flat “Beetlejuice” rip-off with Fred Savage and Howie Mandel. This is yet another zombie comedy, when I was already zom-com’d out in about 2010. I didn’t even like “Shaun of the Dead”, and hell I was pretty well sick of zombies in general by about the end of the second season of “The Walking Dead” (I haven’t tuned in since). This zombie comedy is an Aussie-made outing from writer-director Abe Forsythe, who seemingly doesn’t have much faith in his Aussie TV actors and character players, thus casting a couple of outsiders in Lupita Nyong’o and Josh Gad to help out playing characters who needn’t have been American, really. All I can say is, thank God for Josh Gad, because he’s the only thing that even remotely amuses in this stale, woodenly performed endeavour. As the supremely selfish, quite craven kids show host with Method-acting training, Gad absolutely goes for pathetic broke in a genuinely hilarious performance. Seriously, in a film that is otherwise agonisingly slow, this guy descends into unedifying hysteria within his first few minutes and just keeps going lower. He’s weird as hell doing Jack Black-as-Pee-Wee-Herman gone even further to seed than that one time Pee-Wee got caught with his pee-pee out. The speech he has about scoring with single mums is a sleazy, pathetic show-stopper of hilarity. It’s a long slog getting to him though, far too long, in fact as the film is inert already in the first act. Hell, it’s a fair distance before leading lady Lupita Nyong’o turns up as well. Even when Gad does show up he’s fighting for screen time with some pretty dull characters and performers around him, including a bunch of uninteresting, charmless children. 

A big source of problem for me was that I think I was meant to warm to the character played by Alexander England. I did not. At all. I hated him with every fibre of my being from his very first scene. He gives Bert from the original “Cabin Fever” a run for his money in the loathsome and unlikeable stakes, and is in the film a lot more. He also uses a tediously inarticulate vocabulary. It’s not that England swears throughout the film. I swear too. Frequently. However, I don’t do it on such regularity that I sound inarticulate and in dire need of a thesaurus. I know a few other words, too. It’s not funny, it’s not compelling dialogue, and he’s not at all likeable. And this is our dipshit leading man! I also thought England looked more like Kat Stewart’s son, not her brother, so that was an adjustment for me as well. I’m not sure what Nyong’o was doing here in an Aussie film as, Oscar win aside, I don’t think she’s exactly marquee value or anything. However, at least she has some sweetness and charisma, more than I can say for England. 

The zombie FX, seemingly mostly practical, are rather good. I was glad that the film didn’t over-indulge in CGI, especially since the budget probably didn’t cater for the very best stuff anyway. So that was good. The rest though, total snoozer I’m afraid. How can a film featuring a bunch of little children getting menaced by child zombies be so crushingly dull and (outside of Josh Gad) humourless? Actually, having zombie children isn’t even new, “[REC]” did that too. So yeah, this one’s got nothing new, pretty much though watching Nyong’o slaughter zombies with a shovel is fun for a bit. The musical references for the sake of it, less fun. Sorry, but referencing Taylor Swift, Neil Diamond, and Hanson isn’t in and of itself an actual joke. Meanwhile, characters wonder why the U.S. military is hanging around. Me too. I also wonder why decent Aussie/NZ actors like Marshall Napier are being forced to play Americans with unconvincing accents. You’ve already hired a Yank (Gad) and a Kenyan-Mexican actress using a Yank accent (Nyong’o, whose character’s origin isn’t divulged in the film), but for the roles that specifically call for Americans…you cast a Kiwi-born Aussie resident (Napier)? Yeah, makes sense. I know you might want to cast the most accomplished actors, but c’mon. 

Another zombie comedy, another…zombie…comedy. Sigh. Can this be the last one? Please? Josh Gad gives the film his all, but there’s otherwise nothing of note here. Oh, and points off for having someone dress up as Darth Vader but utter “Star Wars” dialogue that no Sith would ever speak. That’s just a rookie mistake right there.

 

Rating: C