Recently released on DVD: "Zombieland"

Grade: B

When does a zombie movie become more than a zombie movie? When it’s not just about the zombies, of course.

The action-comedy Zombieland works because it’s played with an emphasis on the living, not the undead. So while it doesn’t deal with zombies as social satire (Dawn of the Dead), zombies as moral parable (28 Days Later) or zombies as the British (Shaun of the Dead), a lot of the zing in Zombieland is that its monsters are merely an excuse for good ol’ fashion ash-kicking.

After a worldwide plague — yes, one of those again — turns almost every human into a flesh-eating ghoul, a few stragglers wander the postapocalyptic landscape looking for food, safety and zombie-free living. One, a nerdy former University of Texas student (Jesse Eisenberg) — who renames himself after his hometown of Columbus — meets a snakeskin-coated good ol’ boy called Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) whose preferred way to let off steam is blowing away zombies any way he can.

Shortly after Columbus and Tallahassee’s reluctantly team-up, they come upon Wichita (Emma Stone) and her li’l sis Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who are fearless zombie hunters in their own right. The girls are making their way to an abandoned California theme park that’s rumored to be the noninfected’s last stand, so all four head west, stopping off to loot and plunder the house of a famous celebrity.

The identity of that star should remain secret to keep some of the movie’s fun intact, but it’s a goofy turn from a guy who’s always happy to walk a razor’s edge between self-parody and comedy kingpin. And it’s also indicative of where director Ruben Fleischer’s heart lies: It’s not in horror — which is handy, since unlike the similarly regenerative Drag Me to Hell, the terrors of Zombieland don’t go anywhere new. The undead here could be a rabid group of Garfield toys; it really doesn’t matter. What matters is the hyper-crisp, snappy visual pizazz (Fleischer should be tapped for a midlevel superhero flick), the laughs and how well it’s all played.

Harrelson owns the movie, chewing up every line before spitting it out with relish. Eisenberg plays up his filmography of wiry, romantically challenged emo men, Stone has a sexy sass, and even Breslin — who hit a cuteness low with My Sister’s Keeper — has a good time lockin’ and loadin’ her artillery. She chose well. Even hungry zombies move too slow for this fast-moving flick.