Hot Take: It’s Karaoke Night at the cinema and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is performing Superbad and Zombieland. It’s decent karaoke but it’s still karaoke.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse picks the low hanging fruit of every zombie comedy and throws in some of the easy to pick high school guy coming of age comedy fruit as well. That’s not to say it doesn’t have some funny moments but there isn’t much original content.

If you can find a large, consenting audience to watch with, this probably plays great in theaters. In an empty theater it’s probably not as strong so after opening weekend, it might be better to watch at home or with a group of friends looking to have a good laugh together.

“Spoiler Free” Pros

  • If You Love Zombie Movies, You’ll At Least Like This
    Scouts Guide barely earns it’s laughter badge but it does enough to earn the right to sew it on by the end.
  • Who Doesn’t Love the “Let’s Come Up With Some Really Creative Weapons to Kill Zombies With” Scene?
    It can’t be a spoiler when you know it’s coming, right?
  • Halston Sage
    She’s already been the attainable unattainable girl for the supporting actor in Paper Towns and Goosebumps in 2015. In Scouts Guide, she’s upgraded to the attainable unattainable girl for one of the main characters. If it ain’t broke, I guess?

“Spoiler Free” Cons

  • What American Idol Taught Me
    The thing I learned from watching over a decade of American Idol is how dangerous it is to try and pull off a Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey song. In attempting to differentiate itself from Superbad, SGTTZA double taps Zombieland and, at times, it comes across like a solo cover of the Houston/Carey duet “When You Believe” which if you’ve ever heard someone do this at Karaoke night, you’d realize what a bad idea it is. It’s not that SGTTZA can’t sing, it’s just pale in comparison.
  • About That Whole Scouts Angle…
    It’s rare you say a joke isn’t used enough but the fact these guys were scouts could have been used for more than to drive home the message these three guys were looked at as losers.
  • So Many Other Movie Rip-Offs…
    If you didn’t find the scenes in Superbad or Zombieland, there’s plenty of other movies ripped off. The two most obvious are From Dusk Till Dawn and Die Hard but there’s a few others, too.