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WE BOUGHT A ZOO
One of Hollywood's greatest storytellers, Cameron Crowe, the man behind Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous scored again with a 2011 sleeper called We Bought a Zoo, a fact-based comedy-drama that is completely warm and winning thanks to a terrific cast, even if the screenplay could have stood a little tightening.
Matt Damon stars as Benjamin Mee, a former globe-trotting reporter and widowed father of an angry preteen son and an adorable daughter, who finds a perfect new home for his family but is thrown when he learns that the house is part of an actual zoo that has been closed and that living in the house would mean getting the zoo operational again.
Mee initially balks at the idea of running a zoo until he sees his little girl, Rosie, feeding the ducks and quicker than you can say "Doctor Dolittle", Benjamin finds himself completely enveloped in getting this zoo back on its feet, with the help of the pretty and the all-about-the work zookeeper (Scarlett Johansson), goes about learning the realities of mounting such a business which includes developing actual relationships with animals and dealing with the sometimes harsh realities of a zoo animal's shelf life.
Crowe and Aline Brosh McKenna have crafted a sometimes edgy and humorous screenplay based on Benjamin Mee's book that might go into a little too much detail in establishing this extremely likable Benjamin Mee, a wonderful father who has clearly put his own grieving process on the back burner in order to take care of his children and hasn't always been successful at it. Rosie is a happy little girl who misses her mom, but is living with her loss. Benjamin's son, Dylan, is another story...this is an angry child who has mistaken his father's grief for anger at him and there are walls between Benjamin and Dylan that we really want to see come down. I was impressed that whenever his kids would ask Benjamin anything about their mother, he never changed or avoided the subject and answered them as honestly as he could. The scene near the end of the film where he tells them about the first time he met their mother is absolutely brilliant.
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The other thing I loved about this movie is watching these actors interact with real animals and the actual relationships that Benjamin and the other characters have with the zoo inhabitants. We find ourselves buying the relationship that develops between Benjamin and a dying tiger, the joy Rosie experiences watching a mother peacock experience pregnancy, or one of the workers name Robin (Patrick Fugit) whose entire time onscreen is spent with a small chimpanzee on his shoulder. Benjamin also has an encounter with an escaped grizzly bear that literally had me holding my breath.
Crowe has employed first rate production values here, with special nods to cinematography and editing and as he always does, gets first rate performances from his cast. Matt Damon has rarely been so charismatic onscreen, an edgy performance that actually ignited a tear duct or two from this reviewer and creates a viable chemistry with sexy Johansson, which never gets in the way of the real story being told here. Also loved Angus McFayden as a hard-drinking zoo employee and John Michael Higgins as a tight-assed zoo inspector. The real Benjamin Mee also makes a cameo appearance. It's slightly overlong, but animal lovers and Matt Damon lovers will be in heaven here.
One of Hollywood's greatest storytellers, Cameron Crowe, the man behind Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous scored again with a 2011 sleeper called We Bought a Zoo, a fact-based comedy-drama that is completely warm and winning thanks to a terrific cast, even if the screenplay could have stood a little tightening.
Matt Damon stars as Benjamin Mee, a former globe-trotting reporter and widowed father of an angry preteen son and an adorable daughter, who finds a perfect new home for his family but is thrown when he learns that the house is part of an actual zoo that has been closed and that living in the house would mean getting the zoo operational again.
Mee initially balks at the idea of running a zoo until he sees his little girl, Rosie, feeding the ducks and quicker than you can say "Doctor Dolittle", Benjamin finds himself completely enveloped in getting this zoo back on its feet, with the help of the pretty and the all-about-the work zookeeper (Scarlett Johansson), goes about learning the realities of mounting such a business which includes developing actual relationships with animals and dealing with the sometimes harsh realities of a zoo animal's shelf life.
Crowe and Aline Brosh McKenna have crafted a sometimes edgy and humorous screenplay based on Benjamin Mee's book that might go into a little too much detail in establishing this extremely likable Benjamin Mee, a wonderful father who has clearly put his own grieving process on the back burner in order to take care of his children and hasn't always been successful at it. Rosie is a happy little girl who misses her mom, but is living with her loss. Benjamin's son, Dylan, is another story...this is an angry child who has mistaken his father's grief for anger at him and there are walls between Benjamin and Dylan that we really want to see come down. I was impressed that whenever his kids would ask Benjamin anything about their mother, he never changed or avoided the subject and answered them as honestly as he could. The scene near the end of the film where he tells them about the first time he met their mother is absolutely brilliant.
The other thing I loved about this movie is watching these actors interact with real animals and the actual relationships that Benjamin and the other characters have with the zoo inhabitants. We find ourselves buying the relationship that develops between Benjamin and a dying tiger, the joy Rosie experiences watching a mother peacock experience pregnancy, or one of the workers name Robin (Patrick Fugit) whose entire time onscreen is spent with a small chimpanzee on his shoulder. Benjamin also has an encounter with an escaped grizzly bear that literally had me holding my breath.
Crowe has employed first rate production values here, with special nods to cinematography and editing and as he always does, gets first rate performances from his cast. Matt Damon has rarely been so charismatic onscreen, an edgy performance that actually ignited a tear duct or two from this reviewer and creates a viable chemistry with sexy Johansson, which never gets in the way of the real story being told here. Also loved Angus McFayden as a hard-drinking zoo employee and John Michael Higgins as a tight-assed zoo inspector. The real Benjamin Mee also makes a cameo appearance. It's slightly overlong, but animal lovers and Matt Damon lovers will be in heaven here.