Aww, crap, I said, ten minutes into Andrew Currie's Fido, Someone's decided to remake Edward Scissorhands, but with zombies. Don't get me wrong, I don't loathe Tim Burton in the same visceral way I despise Christopher Nolan, but with the best will in the world he's a bit of an embarrassment, isn't he? I can see why his work appeals to the twelve-year-old set, but when I see university students trotting around with Nightmare Before Christmas backpacks? Awkward...
Let's be honest, on the surface, Fido does carry a lot of Burtonesque trappings. There's the sparkly-clean airbrushed 1950s visuals, the socially isolated young hero, and was there ever really a more Burton-friendly concept than the tale of a boy and his pet zombie? As I settled in to watch, my heart quickly grew heavy at the thought of having to sit through yet another tale of a misunderstood white male who almost loses everything he loves because the world is such a cruel and heartless place when you can't be bothered engaging with it.
Dammit, sometimes it feels good to be wrong. Rather than the treacly cod-fairytale I was expecting, Fido turned out to be a charming little piece of social commentary with more humanity in its 93-minute length than Burton has managed in his entire career thus far.
Credit where it's due; a lot of this is down to Billy Connolly as the titular character, a blue-skinned and entirely nonverbal zombie. Connolly communicates whole worlds of emotion with a sigh and a tilt of the head; his Fido is a laid-back and fundamentally affable individual who doesn't seem particularly interested in chowing down on anybody who doesn't represent a threat to Timmy, his human pal.
Playing support, meanwhile, we have Carrie-Anne Moss from The Matrix as Timmy's mother, in a role that's a whole lot more interesting than is usually the case in films such as these. Mrs. Robinson starts out as the sort of bog-standard social climber you get in every film about the hidden darkness at the heart of cosy suburbia but becomes the very heart of the movie, growing and changing but never losing track of what matters.
One of the things I loved about Fido is the way that Currie and his team seem to genuinely like people, to the extent where even the neighbourhood pervert Mr Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) gets a shot at redemption. His final scene in particular gave me a nicer case of the warm fuzzies than I've had in a very long time indeed.
Other than that? The film looks great, and thanks to some really nice pastiche songwriting, it sounds great, too. Blood and gore are kept to a minimum, and what we do get is determinedly cartoonish; unless your kids or grandmother are exceptionally sensitive, nothing here will bother them in the least. This suited me down to the ground, but if you're in the mood for hardcore zombie action then you might want to look elsewhere - this is a film that values brains far too much to want them splattered all over the wallpaper.
An unexpected delight.
No comments:
Post a Comment