Thursday, September 07 9:15 PM RYERSON
A fantastic movie that shows us what happens when the zombies in the movie give the best performances. Hilariously set in the 1950's (with all that that entails), the ZomCon company has invented a device that turns a ravenous flesh-hungry zombie into an obedient (if extremely dull-witted) slave. This is all explained in the first 5 minutes via a great classically-styled "training video". This has created a new slave-labour-based economy and a corresponding "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality. The laughs keep coming as we follow young Timmy through a week of school and getting his first zombie. 1st graders having regual shooting range practice with uproarious "Don't aim for the chest, head shots are best!" schoolyard sing-song is just one fine example of how well crafted this movie is from beginning to end. The plot develops as we find out that the zombie control collar isn't as sturdy or reliable a piece of technology as one would hope. In the end, people who should be dead are dead, people who should survive have survived, and everyone else staggers around and groans.
Canadian cinema continues to impress, you could call Fido a Canadian Mary Poppins for the 21st century.
So what happens after a zombie attack? Sometimes all the zobmies are cured or die of starvation or are killed, but sometimes they're still around at the end of the movie. What then? Until Fido, no one had really examined the long term social and economic impact of a zombified workforce (actually there was a chapter in the first edition of The Wealth Of Nations, but it was later redacted).
It's 1950's small town America. After The Zombie Wars, mega-corporation Zomboco has made America safe from the zombie menace, by enclosing towns with a zombie proof fence, and providing industry with a workforce of trainable tame zombies, controlled by calming collars. But it's not a perfect world. Anyone that dies immediately rises again, and sometimes the collars malfunction. Then the insatiable zombie hunger for human flesh is once again unleashed upon suburbia.
Young Timmy's grown up with an emotionally absent and oblivious father, and a denial prone mother, so it's little wonder that he bonds with the family's new house-zombie, Fido. But what happens when Fido's control collar malfunctions. Are zombies truly uncontrollable eating machines, or are the capable of more?
Fido is frequently hilarious and often displays a wonderfully casual disregard for human life. Highly recommended.
Cute, campy, hilarious, riotously amusing romp through the relationships that make up a family, and what it means to be family. As one of my fellow bloggers will likely classify this film it's a 'rom-zom-com' that explores zombies through the sensibilities of 1950's "Leave it to Beaver" kind of filter. I was initially a little surprised to look through the guide and *not* see a good zombie comedy in the Midnight Madness stable of offerings....and then I was pleasantly surprised to see that we didn't have to go abroad to get such a great example of the genre. A particular treat to have the main stars show up for a funny Q & A, Billy Connolly gave a insightful look into the hardships of playing a character that only grunts and groans! If this is indicative of the quality of work we can expect at this year's fest we are in for a wonderful year.