We Bought a Zoo

WRITER'S NOTE: This is an advanced review from a preview screening that was held on November 26th. The movie opens in theaters on December 23rd.

Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo is a harmless movie about some very nice people who, yes, end up buying a zoo when they go looking for a new place to live. Unfortunately, while the movie is harmless, it's also not very interesting. Same goes for the people. They're nice and all, but don't seem to have a lot on their minds. Even the zoo animals seem kind of bored. This certainly isn't a bad movie, just a very familiar one.

The film is based on the true story of Benjamin Mee (played here by Matt Damon), a single father who is coping with the recent passing of his wife, and having to raise his two children on his own. His teenage son, Dylan (Colin Ford) is your typical isolated young man, who expresses himself by getting in trouble at school, and drawing graphic pictures of death in class. His younger daughter, Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones), is one of those cloying little movie kids who always has something cute or clever to say on cue whenever the camera is pointed at her. He also has a supportive brother (Thomas Haden Church), who is mainly there for sarcastic comic relief. Benjamin decides the time has come for a change when Dylan is expelled from school, and he himself becomes fed up with his newspaper job, and walks off. He wants to start a new life for himself and his family.

He finds the perfect home somewhere in the Southern California countryside. Naturally, it's the one that the realtor seems the most nervous about, due to the fact that the house comes with its own struggling private zoo. In what has to be one of the biggest impulse buys in the history of cinema, Benjamin decides to buy the house when he sees how happy his little daughter is around the animals. I certainly hope there was more than that behind his decision to buy the property in real life. The family moves in, and they take charge of the zoo, which comes with its own staff of colorful stock characters. There's Kelly the zookeeper (Scarlett Johansson), who serves as somewhat of a love interest for Benjamin. The zoo's staff even has a teenage zookeeper (Elle Fanning) to act as a love interest for Dylan. There's an attempt at a subplot about Fanning's character trying to help Dylan come out of the emotional shell he's been in since his mother died. Too bad it never really works on an emotional level. Maybe if she had been written as an actual character, rather than someone whose main character trait is to smile a lot.

The rest of the staff is made up of eccentrics and oddballs that the movie can't think of anything to do with, so they're not worth mentioning. I understand what Crowe was going for here - He wanted to make a big-hearted movie about a family's emotional healing after a crisis, and how this family adventure of trying to run the zoo brought them closer together. You can literally see the screenplay co-written by Crowe trying its hardest to push our emotional buttons. You can also see him throwing just about every audience-pleasing trick in the book. A cute child, a shy teen romance, the struggle to save a sick tiger, a monkey who makes cute little reactions to what the characters say, a father trying to move on from his painful past, as well as connect with his emotionally distant son...It gets to be a bit much. I have not read the book that inspired this film, so I don't know if things actually happened this way. But, it felt awfully manipulative and contrived to me.

I was also put off by the severe tonal shifts that go on throughout the movie. The stuff concerning Damon and his son are actually pretty good, and there are some honest moments. But then, there are a lot of moments that are so overly sentimental or broad that they seem like they belong in a different movie. Thomas Haden Church is one of my favorite actors, but his role as the dry-witted brother is out of place. He's like a character on a sitcom, his every word a sarcastic quip. Equally out of place is John Michael Higgins, who plays the film's villain, a safety inspector who wants to close down the zoo, and does his best to find problems with it. Higgins plays the part too broad. As soon as he steps out of the car with that confident and smug smirk plastered on his face, you know what role he's supposed to play. And that smirk never leaves his face. It's like he's silently telling us at all times, "Yep, I'm a jerk. How can I be so terrible to these nice people? Don't you just hate me?"

We Bought a Zoo wants to wear its great big heart on its sleeve, and it does. But then, for some reason, it thinks we don't notice, so it keeps on hammering good, sunny feelings into each scene to the point that I started to feel assaulted by the film's manipulations. Like I said, I have not read the book that the film is based on, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's more honest and subtle than what's up on the screen. It has to be, because it's real life. This movie is an overly sunny, sitcom-level imitation of real life.

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