The film starts with the beautiful and happy Pitt family sitting down to a peaceful breakfast. Hey, you do need a full stomach if the dead are about the walk the earth.
A quick question. Does your average American eat pancakes for breakfast? This is something I've always wanted to know. I'd assume that most people would just throw down a bowl of cereal and a coffee then run out the door. So, I guess the Pitt family's pre-infestation breakfast of pancakes is cinematic shorthand for "Hey, this is your average, loving, post-nuclear, terrorist aware, American family"? Honestly, I'm really not taking the piss out our American cousins; I really am curious. I just have a glass of grapefruit juice. I used to have a cup of coffee. Instant. I love a cup of freshly ground coffee, but found that it played havoc with my, shall we say "internal workings" that early in the morning. Oh and I mix a little water with the grapefruit juice so I goes down a little easier as sometimes it can be a little thick. Definitely no pancakes. Who has the time? I'd have to get up at least 30 minutes earlier, get everyone else up - and I think they'd complain about getting up at 5:45am - just for pancakes and bacon. I think they'd kill me. Which brings us to bacon. Over here we mostly eat smoked, back bacon (I think our Canadian brothers and sisters eat the same), but the US family seems to eat, what we call "streaky" bacon. Less meat, more fat. Is it difficult to get decent back bacon in the States or do people really prefer the taste of streaky? Well, I suppose you can fit more in the pan as it's narrower than back bacon. Notice I say "narrower", this is to differentiate between the width of the bacon slice and the thickness. Thickness is probably the most important element to a good slice of bacon. I like to get ours from the local butcher. It's dry smoke cured, thick cut back bacon. Sometimes we get an end cut which is as thick as a piece of gammon steak. Gorgeous! Bacon, however, we eat in the evening, if I fancy a rest from cooking a fancy meal. Bacon, sausages (from the same butcher), chips or sometimes hasselback potatoes, tomatoes and brown (never tomato) sauce. This is known as a "Full English Breakfast", and yes, we have it for dinner. So, Our family all sit down together, in the evening, for a full cooked breakfast. The exact opposite from the Pitt family. Does that make us weird? Would we fail a zombie apocalypse because we eat our bacon in the evening and just a cup of grapefruit juice in the morning. Is this why Pitt succeeds? He has a belly full of pancakes and bacon to give him the fuel to fight the zombie horde! Anyway, the question still stands. Do Americans really eat bacon and pancakes together for breakfast?
To tell you the truth, I wrote the above before watching the film, assuming it would be crap. Then I could say "whatever you think of the review at least it's more interesting then the movie". Well, I was wrong. It's not your classic zombie movie however. It's an overly long, coincidence packed, flashy disaster movie with zombies in it and it's really good fun.
Fun coincidence(?) to look out for: Peter Capaldi plays a doctor at a WHO facility near Cardiff!
Original letterboxd review
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