Zookeeper

When settling into the very first scene of Zookeeper, I was actually quite shocked at the number of times that I felt giggles escaping my lips.  Normally with a Happy Madison production (the Adam Sandler founded production company), I spend 75% of the time groaning, and the remaining 25% of my time looking back and trying to establish exactly what butterfly flapped its wings that lead to the chain of events which incited my willingness to view the movie.  I was delightfully surprised that the feel of the intro felt very different in tone to what I had expected, and instantly had hope that this movie could be one that would win me over, against any skepticism that I had when I entered it.

Just like the forces of gravity dictate, I was soon pulled back down to the terrestrial realm of earth and reality when the movie then established a very familiar style and humour found in other like films.  Silliness is the name of the game with this type of film, but it is most often a silliness that is void of much thought and wit.  As I reached the ten minute point of the movie, I was sure of exactly where it would go and was rolling my eyes at a lot of failed attempts at humour.

The film is about Griffin (Kevin James), a man who works as a zookeeper, a profession which this film portrays as one that grown men would not have.  I am not sure this would be the reality, because I could not see such an important job being entrusted to the less than capable hands of teenagers and young adults who are still adjusting to the crazy new hormones that their bodies are introducing them to.  It made me think a bit about The Weather Man, which showed the disdain people had towards television meteorologists (there are some great scenes of Nicolas Cage being shellacked with food products), but that theme seemed to fit a bit better in that film.

As Griffin deals with the relationship issues of what a ‘grown man’ goes through, he contemplates leaving the zoo, something the animals seem none too keen about.  They hold court and decide to help him out.  He soon has to deal with a number of different animals talking in English to him, and giving him advice on how to properly secure a mate.  While a number of the animal characters held no humour at all, there were some moments where I, once again, found the sounds of laughter escaping me.  Thrown in amongst the sea of whimsical refuse were a scant few moments of fun.  I would never go as far to say that it ventured into the land of hilarity, but it is what it is.

James was good enough in this role, although it is not the type that is able to showcase his comedic abilities.  A number of the comedic attempts just felt easily anticipated as well as being dumbed down a considerable amount.  Assisting with a solid performance, and not in the film enough, was Nat Faxon who never seems to get the shine he deserves.  Joe Rogan also appeared and was able to make me laugh a number of times as he played the ex-boyfriend of Griffin’s ex-girlfriend, an egotistical centre of attention if ever there was one.

A long list of celebrities showed up to voice the animals at the zoo, which were, for the most part, animated fairly well to give the appearance of them talking.  I would imagine that for a budget of $80 million (a large budget for a comedy, but not for a Happy Madison comedy) you would expect such things.  On the topic of Happy Madison, the movie did have, of course, a very blatant element of corporate advertising as the grumpy gorilla (voiced by Nick Nolte) seemed really intrigued about the great experience that was TGI Fridays.  Luckily for him, and the audience, we got to see an actual location shoot at a TGI Fridays as Griffin takes the gorilla there to celebrate his birthday.  You gotta love product placement  Still, it was not as jarring as the mid-movie commercial for Royal Caribbean in the middle of Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill (which also, of course, had other products it was pumping, such as Dunkin’ Donuts).

My obvious distaste for the advertisement-filled tactics of Happy Madison movies aside, Zookeeper entertained me more than I had anticipated.  You will not find anything new here, as the film treads over a sadly tried and true formula that Sandler- produced films always adopt.  It is not an earthshattering movie, but it also is not as bad as Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star or any of the other movies that have been pumped out by Happy Madison.  After saying all of that, it still is not a great movie, and the amount of good in it comes nowhere close to countering the amount of bad that you will have to endure.

Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars