Zookeeper

July 31, 2011, 7:57 pm

More kid-friendly cinema. You can tell it’s the school holidays, can’t you?

Plot-in-a-nutshell: nice-guy zookeeper chases the girl of his dreams with advice from talking animals

See it if you like: rom-coms for kids. Yes, I know. Bit of a stretch, really.

Zookeeper has a bit of an identity conflict. In part it’s a kids’ film with talking animals. In part, it’s a romantic comedy with a plot you’ve seen umpteen times before. Both sides are fairly well done, though the animals aren’t “cartoony” enough to really grasp kids and only the small monkey really raised laughs.

Kevin James plays Griffin, the titular character, as he chases the affections of his ex Stephanie (Leslie Bibb). At an engagement party he suddenly finds out that the animals in his charge can talk and they decide to help him out. Of course. These characters include a lion and lioness (voiced by Sylvester Stallone and Cher respectively), a monkey voiced by Adam Sandler, Nick Nolte as a gorilla… Frankly, the voice cast for the animals is by far more star-laden than the regular cast.

It’s not really a bad film or story, it’s just that you feel you’re watching two different ones that have been haphazardly spliced together. There’s something about it that just doesn’t gel.

The talking animals really won’t appeal to adults. The romantic comedy aspect won’t really appeal to kids. As a result, it really doesn’t satisfy either of its target audiences which is a shame.

Zookeeper isn’t a bad film, it’s just two half0decent ones clagged together with split and chewing gum with the gaps between them clearly visible.