Thursday, April 7, 2022

Disney Channel Musical Month - Z-O-M-B-I-E-S


It’s April which means, we’re a month late with the theme month!

The Disney Channel are known primarily for sitcoms, a few of which I covered last year and musicals. High School Musical is the most famous of these, with the 3rd getting a full theatrical release but before and since there have been a whole bunch of them, some of them setting up their own little mini-franchises for better or worse. We’ve already covered the first High School Musical film and both the Teen Beach Movies but it’s time to look at a few more. Let’s start with a more recent Franchise, Z-O-M-B-I-E-S.

Based on a failed TV Pilot from 2012, Z-O-M-B-I-E-S was released in 2018, make of that what you will, and sharing the same writers of said pilot. The film was a success enough that a sequel was greenlit, Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 2, maybe another time we’ll get to that but how does film stack up? Well…

Z-O-M-B-I-E-S, which I’m just gonna call Zombies since I can’t be assed to copy/paste it every time, opens with the exposition that a disruption at a power plant involving lemonade caused some of the population of Seabrook to turn into brain-eating zombies. Eventually the town walled them off and the Zombies starved to death. The end…

No, that didn’t happen for some reason, eventually the Zombies were given Z-bands that use electromagnetic pulses to do something that calm’s the Zombie’s bloodlust. We’re introduced to Zed (Milo Manheim) a second or third generation Zombie who’s excited about starting school, since this is the first year they’re allowed to integrate themselves with the regular kids. But, of course, prejudice runs deep and integrating into society is going to take time, football, cheating and most notably, musical numbers.

Let’s start with the blatant allegory. It’s 2021 and the fact that some grown adults, including those in high positions of government and/or police don’t understand that racism is wrong is appalling. But there’s a big underlying problem with the allegory presented in this film. See, racism is irrational, the difference between people of varying skin tones is just that. But the Zombies having previously eaten people in the past and the only reason they still don’t is because of a watch that even in the film repeatedly malfunctions, their fear of them is not irrational, and the prejudice that comes from that fear make ay least some sense. And it’s not like the X-men or other allegories of this nature where they have the potential to do great good or evil but ultimately are able to make their own choices, it’s a stated fact that without the z-band, it’s a life of eating brains for all zombies.

But at the same time, their means of creating meaningful change through the use of football and later cheerleading rings hollow because meaningful change in the real world was a lot harder than that. Look up what the suffragettes did to get women the vote and you might see what I mean here. I get that they want to make a fun musical for children, but they brought the discussion of racism front and centre and in my opinion, it’s not done well.

So yeah, I’ve just spent 2 paragraphs talking about their portrayal of racism, that’s because the rest of this film is shockingly boring. I like all of the High School Musical films and found the issues of having a crisis of expectations placed upon you vs the reality of what you want quite relateable, even as I approach my 30's. The High School Drama in this film… not so relateable. Zed wants to play football, and then for reasons I can’t quite wrap my head around, they made it so the Zombies get more freedom the more the team wins at football.

This is an attempt to add stakes but my aforementioned issues with the racism allegory kinda deflate that. And then there’s Bucky, the guy with an inflated sense of his own importance. He’s an inferior copy with Sharpay with only half the personality and almost none of the comedy. He’s the main antagonist of most of the film and doesn’t fill that very well either, his motivation is weak, he doesn’t hate Zombies for the logical reasons of their ancestors’ eating brains but because they’re stealing the spotlight away from him, a cheerleader… Surely having a better sports team means more cheering…

He's also the cousin of our obligatory love interest, Addison. She wears a wig and has naturally white hair… Frankly the ridicule she gets for that is a better allegory for racism the actual main one. She’s the one who gets to experience the Zombie world and discover all its injustices. She’s a decent actress but I've just got nothing to say about Addison as a character, this story did not need her to be a love interest and most of the plot happens around her rather than to her.

Unfortunately, the genericism of everything applies to the songs as well. The songs feel bland and lacking in personality. In my opinion they should have played up the contrast between the human zombie world with contrasting musical tones. There’s some decent choreography, but it’s clear the effort was put there.

Zombies did not do it for me, it’ll appeal to younger children but to me it felt like an inferior copy of High School Musical, with the added poorly thought-out racism allegory with the Disney approved Happy ending. This lacked any sort of personality and it set a very low benchmark for the rest of this theme month. [Note from the future - it will not always be met]

Rating 35/100

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