You know what I think about when watching movies? How come the zookeeper is a good guy in this film, but is a bad guy next door in Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Won’t kids be a tad confused?
I’m kinda done with Kevin James. Few notions in this world are more cynical than our collective decision to champion Kevin as our cinematic everyman. We are long past the pure decency of Jimmy Stewart. Americans need a less challenging icon – here he is, Kevin James, a short, bland, pudgy but certainly nice 40-something who is funny about once every two movies. And how do we reward our everyman? We give him these:
And the message couldn’t be clearer, could it? Are YOU bland, pudgy and middle-aged? Are you basically a nice guy who says something funny once a year? Then this is the eye candy you deserve.
I don’t dislike Kevin James. I thought he was the perfect Romeo-challenged subject for Hitch. I just ask if we as a society can do better than the Olive Garden of leading men.
Speaking of Olive Garden, here’s Zookeeper, a bland movie accentuated by a Venn diagram with no intersection. Kevin James plays Griffin Keyes, zookeeper (hey, we have a title). Griffin proposes to Stephanie (Leslie Bibb) in the first scene and she turns him down because he’s just a lowly zookeeper. Oh, no! Luckily, Griffin’s four-legged freedom-challenged friends come to the rescue, giving him the ABCs of love in the animal kingdom. Oh yeah, the animals can talk, did I mention that? It’s a mystery as to how or why they learned English, but those are questions for a deeper movie. This one seemed to think that if Sylvester Stallone voiced the male lion and Cher voiced the female lion, hilarity would ensue.
Do you see the problem, dare I say, The Dilemma, yet? Sorry, reviewer humor. OK, here it is: Talking animals aren’t actually funny, especially when not animated. The people who think talking animals are funny aren’t the same group of people who care about adult relationships. I’m sure the studio execs saw this point and contended, “Something for everybody, then.” The actual result is an alienation of everybody. Take the scene in which the wolfpack encourages Griffin to mark his territory to show dominance in the relationship. This is funny? Do you find it funny when you catch a homeless person peeing in public? How about when hot coworker Kate (Rosario Dawson) catches him at the zoo – yes, there were multiple peeing-in-public scenes- and he has to pretend it’s for medicinal purposes, animal-wise? I’m pretty sure if you laughed at that, you wouldn’t care much about the scenes in which Griffin realizes Kate is the better catch than Stephanie. And vice-versa, the scenes of Griffin moping around at a wedding, is that going to appeal to the kid who likes when the elephant tries to play hypnotist?
Do I want to even get into Griffin’s best relationship, one with a surly gorilla voiced by Nick Nolte? No, I don’t.
Rated PG, 102 Minutes
D: Frank Coraci
W: Nick Bakay, Rock Reuben, Kevin James, Jay Scherick, David Ronn. Five. Five writers, all men, and not a single good idea or funny line amongst the lot of ya’. Did you guys write this drunk one night at a retreat?
Genre: Talking animals
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The bedridden
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Anybody who paid to see it.
