Let’s get this out of the way — Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland is not a very good movie. Its third act requires that all the principals suddenly become dumber than the undead who peruse them in order to work, there isn’t an original idea in sight and it labors to reach its barely feature-length running time (85 minutes.) Now that I’ve done my duty as a film critic, I can say as a fan of zombies, sitting through Fleischer’s flawed movie was the most fun I’ve had at the multiplex in quite some time. Replete with gallows humor, over-the-top performances and enough splattered blood to make Sam Peckinpah envious, Zombieland is unabashedly goofy and dares you not to laugh at its audacious, apocalyptic vision of a world taken over by the undead.

Story? Fleischer don’t need no stinkin’ story when he’s got thousands of zombies to kill and Woody Harrelson around to rend the screen as Tallahassee, a displaced soul who’s finally found his place in life, namely dispatching reanimated corpses to their final resting place. He reluctantly takes Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) under his wing, a paranoid college student trying to get back home. They encounter sisters Witchita and Little Rock on the road (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) and after an initial misunderstanding, these four decide to head to California’s Pacific Playland amusement park, a rumored zombie-free zone.

To refer to this as a plot is giving screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick far too much credit. This film is so thin it depends on an extended cameo from a major star at the 50-minute mark just so it can limp to its meager running time. Good thing this is the Best. Cameo. Ever. Otherwise Zombieland would be nothing more than a pilot episode for a sit-com titled “Those Darn Zombies.” In the end, you’ll find the film impossible to defend but hard to resist.

Contact Chuck Koplinski at [email protected].