While I'm not a fan of the adjective, the term "cute" could be applied here as readily as it could for any story from the halcyon era of 1950's suburbia. Well, I take that back. "Far From Heaven" wasn't cute...unless you're talking about Dennis Quaid...no. But in this quaint little look at Americana, writer/director had removed anyone of African ancestry and replaced them with ZOMBIES!!! Zombie servants, zombie gardeners, zombie garbage men, etc.
This "utopia" exists in a world where the events depicted in "Night of the Living Dead" really took place, but rather than humanity being consumed as a whole, it figured out how to enslave zombies and curb their murderous appetites for the good of the white bread, white collar, white folks. When the Robinson family acquire their first zombie servant, young Timmy doesn't understand why their buttling corpse, named Fido (Billy Connelly), should be treated with equal respect as everyone else. His mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) is understanding of Timmy's confusion and even begins to dote on the creature, but Mr. Robinson (Dylan Baker channeling the spirit of Don Knotts) hates zombies out of fear and wants nothing to do with it.
As you can imagine, things go awry, blood squirts and the body count goes up, but it's a zombie comedy that could be seen as the very antithesis of Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive." It's more akin to a macabre episode of "Leave it to Beaver." The social commentary about attitudes towards race during the 1950's is present in a number of tongue-in-cheek ways within the film - including the shunned Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson in a hilarious role), who lost his job once he took on a zombie mistress. Thankfully, it's never to blatant, leaving "Fido" as a pleasant and comedic watch.
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