July Movie #3: Zookeeper

Starring: Kevin James, Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, Nick Nolte (voice), Adam Sandler (voice), Sylvester Stallone (voice), Cher (voice), Jon Favreau (voice)
Directed By: Frank Coraci
Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

Zookeeper is about a zookeeper named Griffin (played by James) who takes advice on how to win back the love of his life Stephanie (played by Bibb) from the animals at the zoo... who can all talk.

I took my nine year old niece Rachael to this movie because I thought it would be funny, cute, and appeal to an older child (but yet still a child). She said after the movie that she did like it and her mother told me that she probably did like it... but since she didn't laugh once and she looked incredibly bored throughout, I have a feeling she really didn't like it. I myself barely laughed... and that's saying something!

The previews were funnier than this movie. My sister absolutely loves the moment where the gorilla and the zookeeper pull up to TGI Fridays and the gorilla turns to the zookeeper and says, "Shut up!" because he's so excited about going to his favorite restaurant. But since I had seen that preview a million times, the actual moment in the movie wasn't funny. It was cute. But it had lost its charm. And that is true of a lot of the scenes. They had no charm in the movie.

Part of the reason I didn't particularly like this movie is because it spent far too much time out of the zoo, away from the talking animals. Outside of the zoo, Griffin is just a man, not a zookeeper interacting with animals that can talk. A man trying to woo an incredibly shallow and annoying person. The scenes with her are annoying. And not funny. There were just too many scenes outside of the zoo.

Back at the zoo, I did laugh a few times. A few short, soft, slight laughs. I think the problem there was that I didn't really like the animals. Sure, they were magnificent and cute and cuddly like animals are but there were few distinct personalities to make me love the animals. And me not loving an animal speaks volumes about where this movie went wrong. I did root for sad Bernie. I wanted to know more about his backstory, why he was so sad. I am really glad that they did let us know why he was sad. It was an interesting commentary about zoos in general. Very subtle. I did love little Donald the monkey. I liked his zinger about thumbs. And his advice about throwing poo. Which leads me to the other animals' advice. Another reason why this movie didn't gel - the animals' advice sucked. Of course, one could argue it's because they're animals that their advice was so sucky, both by nature of being a "dumb" animal and the fact that animal nature does not work in the real world. But I think it could have opened a whole can of funny if their advice conflicted more... and yet one does have to wonder why a human would think it was a good idea to growl at another human (although that scene was funny).

So... skip it. Yes, I am telling you to skip a movie about talking animals. Me. That's sucky and non-funny this movie is. It's not even a rainy day or sick in bed type of movie. It didn't have charm, talking monkey and all.