Zombieland: It's just a heck of carnival attraction

"Zombieland's" world of reanimated corpses finds humankind suffering from an unidentified plague, with its heroes fighting off the infected with nervous plum, an inventive odd lot arsenal of anti-zombie weaponry (shotgun, machine gun, baseball bat, toilet seat cover, pruning shears, rotary cultivator, grand piano), and some plain, "Made in America" common sense. The spiffy script by friends-since-high-school buddies Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (both of whom share executive producer credit with Ezra Swerdlow) builds on their screen success with several Spike TV series, including 2003's "The Joe Schmo Show" and "Invasion Iowa" two years later.

The small (living) cast layers on their own serio-nonsense. Jesse Eisenberg, recently one of the shining stars in Greg Mottola's indie hit "Adventureland," also earned several award nominations for his performance as a teenage victim of divorced intellectuals in Noam Baumbach's 2006 tragi-comedy "The Squid and the Whale." He introduces and narrates "Zombieland" with a dorky nervousness. As Columbus (all the main characters opt to be called by the city of their hoped-for destination), he's about as scary a zombie killer as a goldfish with curly hair. A family-disowned loner with a serious case of coulrophobia, we learn the shy college student can't get the girl next door except under bizarre circumstances. And that's far from the slam dunk he expected.

Thankfully there's nothing remotely serious about "Zombieland." It's just a heck of carnival attraction (Shoot the ducks/Shoot the zombies) on a roller coaster filled with laughs.