If you are even the slightest bit less jaded, cynical and bitter to life and movies than me, the film critic who cannot enjoy anything but dark, thoughtful art house movies in black and white and a foreign language, then do not hesitate to see “We Bought a Zoo.” It will make you feel elated. You will bawl your eyes out with tears of pure sunshine.
“We Bought a Zoo” is possibly the most joyously tepid movie ever made. It is schlock, formula tearjerker filmmaking to perfection. It is as dopey and exuberantly cute and infectious as any movie you will ever see ever.
Watching it, I felt like Benjamin Mee’s (Matt Damon) teenage boy, just rolling my eyes and muttering under my breath at every passing moment to all the fun emotions and happy people around me.
Except like a teenage boy, I’m brooding and hating it all for no good reason. It’s lame and bad and predictable and stupid and formulaic, but it’s all so HAPPY. You don’t watch the movie or think about it; you just cheer in glee.
Yay! Animals! “We Bought a Zoo” has lots of animals. Some are big, some are scary, some are cuddly and some are ugly. Some of them accidentally escape, and some of them make Matt Damon nervous. I can’t think if any pooped, which is surprising I guess. The Mee family is responsible for taking care of them after Benjamin the journalist quits his job (part of the reason I didn’t fully buy this movie) and, can you guess, BUYS A ZOO!
Yay! Cute! It’s fun to own a zoo! The little girl Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones) could not be happier. If you looked up “Hollywood Adorable” in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Rosie hugging Shirley Temple, and you would not be able to tell the two apart.
Yay! Sunshine! Rosie has a brother too, Dylan. He’s a great artist, but he only draws dark and scary images, like a decapitation. The school he goes to doesn’t like this, so they expel him and say he has a mental problem. This movie doesn’t know darkness.
Yay! Young love! But Dylan is turned around when he meets Lily, who doesn’t know too many boys her age and is so in love that she brings him sandwiches every day. Lily is played by Elle Fanning, who other young teenage boys also had an instant crush on in “Super 8.” In that case, she’s perfect casting. One reaction shot between the two of them, and you know they’ll end up together!
Yay! Teamwork! “We Bought a Zoo” is filled with little words of wisdom as they all work really hard to rebuild this rundown zoo and reopen it. Matt Damon always has a grin on his face when he tells his son that you can do anything with just 20 seconds of courage. If they try hard enough, they can even beat the Mean Inspector Guy who wants their zoo to fail.
“We Bought a Zoo” is directed by Cameron Crowe, who has made some terrifically feel good movies that are more interesting than this, such as “Almost Famous,” “Say Anything” and “Jerry Maguire.” As a Crowe film, it goes without saying this movie also has a lot of rock songs, so Yay Music, I guess. And how can you hate a movie with Cat Stevens? Or a tiger? Or a girl with pigtails? Or an entire zoo?
2 ½ stars