Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

This movie has been on and off my radar for a while now. Over the years, I went back and forth on watching it, alternating between "this could be dumb fun" and "this just sounds dumb". It wasn't until I saw someone else's review of it on BlueSky that I saw a little nugget of information that finally pushed it into the "gotta see it" zone. That would be it being directed by Christopher Landon, director of both the Happy Death Day movies, as well as Freaky. I adore all three of those movies. Landon has shown himself to be particularly adept at horror comedy, so I was eager to see what he could do with zombie movies. I'd do a plot explanation, but really, it's not all that necessary. It's teenage boys who are scouts (but not Boy Scouts), who partner up with a cocktail waitress that just so happens to be a hot blonde, fighting a zombie horde to save the town. Hijinks and horror ensue. It's not original at all, but it also isn't trying to be, which is fine. If done right, paint-by-numbers can be just fine. In that regard, if you turn off the brain and just give in to the craziness, it does what it's supposed to do. It's like a Burger King burger; it fills you up and approximates a reasonable burger. I mean, there's a fight scene scored to "9 to 5". That's fun. That being said, it's also a mid 2010's comedy, so there's some of that edgelord humor mixed in. There was a scene where a buxom lady zombie gets caught in a gate, ripping off her top and exposing her breasts, and she writhes around making them jiggle. That's the kind of humor level we're talking here. It's funny but it's not witty. Freaky and the HDD movies were smart and clever with their humor. Scouts Guide is obvious and crass for the sake of it. The constantly horny guy was cringe even in 2015, and now he's just annoying. And as fun as it is to see the gang get into scrapes and then out of them, or the bad ass last act complete with "Rock You Like A Hurricane" as a needle drop, there's also no tension. At no point did I feel any of the main four characters were in actual danger, so it does rob the movie of stakes. But I could still see the things Landon would come to perfect in later movies. There's a sense of energy and fun in Scouts Guide. There's charm, both in the friendships and struggles between the three boys, and then when they meet Denise the cocktail waitress. There's Landon's hallmark for having these unusually poignant moments that seem out of place but have a genuine heart to them. There's moments where the movie sags a bit, and there are moments where it feels like a page or two of the script was torn out and the plot just jumps from event to event because it needs to. The positives outweighed the negatives for me here.