Several years after the last events, Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock are still fighting against the Zombies, but manage to find refuge in the abandoned White House. When Columbus proposes to Wichita, she and Little Rock flee with their vehicle. However, Wichita returns when Little Rock fled from her in order to live with her new boyfriend, musician Berkley, in Babylon, a hippie commune. Tallahassee, Columbus and Wichita, together with a dumb blond Madison, go to search for her. Once in Babylon, their weapons are confiscated and melted, which proves detrimental when an army of Zombies attack. Luckily, Tallahassee manages to trick all the Zombies into following him to the top of the building and falling from it into their doom. Little Rock breaks up with Berkley while Wichita accepts Columbus' marriage proposal.
10 years after the sleeper cult film "Zombieland", all the cast and film crew joined their forces to deliver a sequel which did not quite justify for such a long wait: there is too much improvisation which is just there to fill the running time, as if the actors and screenwriters were making stuff up as they went along, whereas the inspiration is scarce. "Double Tap" is thus one of those "tolerable good films": they work overall, but do not overwhelm or engage the viewers. The director Ruben Fleischer follows the expectation pattern of the sequel, which involves more danger and more new characters for the protagonists, some of which do not have that much of a function in the story (Madison, Albuquerque), though the original cast is still contagiously fun and sometimes stumble upon a good joke (such as when Columbus has to put post-it papers over the eyes of a painting of Abraham Lincoln while he is about to land in bed with Wichita). The film works, albeit in a very routine manner. However, two moments of sheer creativity raise the level through the roof. One is Bill Murray's "comeback" cameo in the film. The other is a small comic chef-d'œuvre, an insane outburst of untrammelled ingenuity in the "Zombie kill of the year" sequence in which an Italian guy lures Zombies on the street and then uses a jack to tip the Leaning Tower of Pisa (!) in order for it to fall and squash the Zombies, triumphantly shouting "Vaffanculo!", which perfectly encapsulates that temperamental nature of the indestructible Italian spirit. That sequence alone is about two levels above the rest of the film.
Grade:++
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