Movie review in the Friday, Dec. 23 Oregonian....
"We Bought a Zoo" very loosely adapts a 2008 memoir by Benjamin Mee, who worked with his family to purchase and resurrect a decrepit zoo in rural England while dealing with a host of logistical and financial problems -- and, horribly, the death of his wife.
In the film, the animal park is located in rural California, and Mee (Matt Damon) is a recent widower who quits his newspaper gig and blows his inheritance on the failing zoo on impulse. This delights his young daughter (Maggie Elizabeth Jones) and pisses off his brooding teenager (Colin Ford). Father and son are provided with convenient parallel love interests from the zoo's movie-quirky staff -- in the form of an overworked zookeeper (Scarlett Johansson) and her lovestruck niece (Elle Fanning).
Thanks to a typically grounded performance by Damon and the general sun-dappled earnestness of the enterprise, "Zoo" is a modestly charming family crowdpleaser -- this despite (a) the too-broad characterizations by many in the supporting cast, (b) the film's tendency to create crises that are resolved in the very next scene, and (c) its additional tendency to lean on music, cute animals, and big-speech grandstanding like they were car horns. ("Zoo"'s high production value and good humor do trounce "Dolphin Tale," the last big entry in the kids-and-animals genre.)
The only thing that's sort of depressing is that a flick this utterly disposable was co-written and directed by none other than Cameron Crowe -- the former pop wunderkind who mixed music, big speeches, high emotion and genial characters with vastly more wit and finesse in "Say Anything...," "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous." People frequently narrate their profound feelings in showboat monologues in Crowe's films, but this time around it feels more self-conscious, and a lot less illuminating.
If you're a fan of those earlier films, "Zoo" sort of leaves you wondering if Crowe -- spooked by the mixed reaction to "Vanilla Sky" and "Elizabethtown" -- chose to play it safe, remixing echoes of his usual screenwriting devices in pursuit of a surefire hit.
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(124 min., rated PG) Grade: C
'We Bought A Zoo' (The Oregonian, Friday, Dec. 23, 2011)
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