Comedy and horror usually make for the best audience reactions when done right, and South Korea just excels at both. You knew what you were getting when you lined up for this one, and it does manage to deliver the laughs plus a healthy dose of zombie mayhem. Our main characters have not much going for them. They may not have enough brainpower to figure out the problem, but at least they’ll try to profit from it.
The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale was directed by Lee Min-jae who wrote it with Jung Seo-in. A zombie (Jung Ga-Ram) shows up in the town of Poongsan. After biting the patriarch of the Park family, Man-duk (Park In-Hwan), he’s found in the garage of their gas station. Naturally, the family does the decent thing and turns over the zombie to the authorities.
Ok, no – not exactly that.
Instead the Park family decides to profit from the incident by charging everyone foolish enough to try it for a bite from the zombie. However, even as car mechanic Joon-Gul (Jung Jae-Young) and pregnant frying-pan-wielding wife Nam-Joo (Uhm Ji-Won) see this as a chance to make money and bring back the gas station, their extended family has other plans. University-graduate brother and master of fiendish plans, Min-Gul (Kim Nam-Gil), is scheming to steal the zombie and mass-produce the bite effects. But youngest sister bunny-killing Hae-Gul (Lee Soo-Kyung) has develop a crush on the zombie she has now lovingly named Jjong-Bi.
The comedy works for the most part. There’s a few instances in which the movie walks the line between the characters been annoyingly endearing and plain annoying. Fortunately, we have enough characters to switch to back and forth. The horror is primarily subdued even though the film does up the ante as the virus spreads and the horde multiplies. Actually, this is a good thing since it happens once the original premise is starting to run aground.
Lightly recommended with reservations. It’s mainly a comedy film that works overall and has the zombie outbreak to fall on when things are starting to drag. The characters are endearing but sometimes can walk the line between funny annoying and plain annoying. It does get a second wind once all hell breaks loose but thankfully it knows to reach a satisfying conclusion once its material has run out. Definitely a good popcorn movie to see with an audience seeking a few laughs, but hardly a film you can watch alone or need to see more than once.
That will do for now.
Never Think Impossible 