Army of Tig

So, sadly predictably, “Army of the Dead” was not very good. Like, only a man who recut a superhero movie into a four-hour opus would think he could pull off a zombie heist movie with authentic pathos. Instead, basically, a bunch of folks died needless graphic deaths because ... money? Yeah, basically. But the one thing I did enjoy about the film — and honestly it was a purposeful afterthought at best — was the casting of Tig Notaro as the crew’s helicopter pilot.

The out comic wasn’t originally part of the movie. She came on board later after the film had finished shooting, when they had to recast the role of comic Chris D’Elia who was originally tapped to play the role of the pilot. But after filming was done, D’Elia’s history of sexually pursuing underage girls got him the Kevin Spacey treatment. Like, whoops, we cast a gross sex monster. Our bad. Let’s pretend this never happened, eh?

As much as I am all for recasting disgusting sexual predators and zapping them out of pop culture, how boring was that casting choice in the first place? Like, you take this zombie movie with a somewhat diverse cast and then pick the most uninspired and uninspiring straight white man for its main comic relief role? That’s just lazy casting, folks. But you put someone like Tig in the role and automatically it’s more interesting. So it’s the proverbial win-win, you don’t go for the obvious/lazy choice who also happens to be a major sex pest and instead hire an out actor who cleans up so well she basically looks like a lesbian Tom Cruise.

But, again, I really can’t recommend this movie. Unless, of course, you want to see how well they did green screening Tig into the picture. Yes, all her scenes were shot against a green screen. In fact, she only interacted on set with one of the movie’s other actors, Ana de la Reguera. I think they did a pretty good job of editing the gross dude out and Tig in. But then, even if they’d used a cardboard cut-out of Tig instead of that D’Elia, it would have been a vast improvement.