Mr. Movie: ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ plot is equally zombified

A critic friend of mine said the only movies more tedious than something based on a Jane Austen novel is one about zombies. He won’t likely see this one — ever. I agree with his take on Austen, but I kind of like zombie movies.

There was a point in time when vampires were my favorite and were the most believable of all the classic horror creatures. In fact, the original vampire novel, Dracula, was written just a few decades after Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. However, modern interpretations of blood suckers have rendered them impotent, thus zombies — at least in my horror book — have risen to the top.

The title Pride and Prejudice and Zombies alone demands humor. It’s an outrageous concept that ought to elicit one belly laugh after another. Mixing stuffy 1800s Austen prose and her equally stuffy characters with smelly, moulding, brain-hungry zombies is — as Austen might have put it — simply scandalous.

You can take the prude out of the prose but you can’t take the zest out of the zombie. However, this one manages — to put it as the acclaimed Austen would — Pride and Prejudice and Zombies barely pops an occasional giggle.

Prim, proper, distinguished and delicate dialogue befitting Austen’s 1813 novel is packed into the picture, and while zombies aren’t an afterthought, they don’t matter much either. Yes, the idea is clever. And I can — with authority — say it’s better than real Jane Austen.

Alas, but it’s still Jane Austen.

This story was originally published February 4, 2016 at 5:02 AM with the headline "Mr. Movie: ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ plot is equally zombified."