Fido (2006)

Fido is Shaun of the Dead meets Pleasantville or Blast from the Past -- a delightfully quirky (okay, twisted) take on Lassie, with a sweet 1950s big band soundtrack. It even asks the big questions, like Do zombies have souls? Carrie-Anne Moss is a 1950s housewife, looking so domestically alluring that Eddie Haskell would have been a very bad boy. Dylan Baker is her clueless husband in a loveless marriage. K'Sun Ray is their son Timmy, a bright boy who asks the deeper questions that make complacent adults uncomfortable. Their decade is not the 1950s that we remember, however: People live in the fenced cities of a postapocalyptic society where anyone who dies, returns as a zombie. ("Help! Grandma fell -- and she's getting up!" cries one girl in a civil-alertness propaganda film.) The '50s duck-and-cover paranoia is aimed at the walking undead, outdoor education class for children means rifles and target practice, and the siege mentality sounds just a bit like our war-on-terror fearmongering. Be thankful, then, for the pervasive Zomcon corporation, whose technology permits the control of zombies (though with the occasional glitch, not to mention preemptive removal of aging relatives), turning them into inept but captive working-class servants. This is how Timmy gets his own pet, Fido (Billy Connolly), who increasingly displays more humanity in his interaction with his family than does Timmy's father or his zombie-war-hero neighbor (Henry Czemy). Of particular note is another neighbor (Tim Blake Nelson) with an even more unconventional relationship with his female zombie servant, not to mention the setup for a scene that begins with "Fido, where's Timmy? Is Timmy in trouble?" and ends with two snotty scouts getting their just deserts. Fido is a hoot of a movie that will almost make you love its namesake. Great script, acting, and soundtrack. 5 stars.