Zookeeper [PG]

Five years ago, zookeeper, Griffin, was dumped by the girl he wanted to marry, and he’s never gotten over that. Now, she’s back and interested in getting him back, but poor Griffin just becomes a bumbling mess whenever around her. But never fear, his animal friends at the zoo, who have actually been able to talk forever, are out to help Griffin be the alpha male and get the girl. 

Let’s not beat about the bush, this film was POINTLESS and RIDICULOUS. Practically everything about it was half-hearted and it harboured maybe one or one and a half seconds of comedy bronze. Like The Dilemma, this movie was based on a somewhat interesting idea, but ultimately served no real purpose. 

Five years ago, zookeeper, Griffin, was dumped by the girl he wanted to marry and he’s never gotten over that. Now, she’s back and interested in getting back, but poor Griffin just becomes a bumbling mess whenever he’s around her. But never fear, his animal friends at the zoo, who have been able to talk as well as humans since forever, are out to help Griffin be the alpha male and get the girl. 

All right, let’s take a look at what this film was: basically just a guy trying to get back his girl with the absurd and irrelevant advice from an assortment of zoo animals. I think what I disliked most about this movie was the fact that there is hardly any explanation in it at all and that everything happened really quickly. The film’s one slightly redeeming feature was the warm and nice friendship that bloomed between Griffin and Bernie, the zoo’s misunderstood and falsely accused gorilla. Their relastionship was sparked as quickly as anything and then shattered completely and then suddenly rebuilt before you could blink. Relationships take time, and there is nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING heart-warming about a friendship that is suddenly sparked and then shattered and then rebuilt in the space of half an hour. 

In so many words, the general feel of the movie was very haphazard: it seemed like a story with potential but then, after everything had been organised and bought and paid for, the filmmakers realised the error of their ways. “Let’s get it over with” seems to be the attitude that both the people working on the film and the audience share with this movie. 

Starring Kevin James, Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, Ken Jeong, Donnie Wahlberg, Joe Rogan, Nat Faxon, and featuring the voice talents of Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler, Sylvester Stallone, Judd Apatow, Jon Favreau, Faizon Love, Bas Rutten, Maya Rudolph, and Cher, Zookeeper was a film that seemed like a good idea at the time, but then was thought better of a quarter of the way through. Filled with talking animals, romance, awkwardness, lessons, and friendship, it’s not a film that I will be watching again within the next hundred years.