Starring: Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Elle Fanning, Colin Ford
Director: Cameron Crowe
Category: I
'Sometimes you just need 20 seconds of insane courage,' says We Bought a Zoo's protagonist, Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon), to his son, Dylan (Colin Ford), in an attempt to impart some fatherly advice about following one's instincts to attain happiness. If only this film could have lived up to its lead character's self-proclaimed ethos.
Cameron Crowe's first fictional feature in six years is a morally safe, technically sound film that fits well with the festive spirit of mainstream audiences at this time of the year, but it is also a film lumbered with so much shallow characterisation and contrived dialogue that even the leads' earnest performances can't really salvage it.
Based on the real-life Mee's published recollections of his experiences overhauling a decrepit zoo in England, Crowe's adaptation relocates the story to the United States and has it unfold around a journalist whose move to the countryside stems from reasons both professional (he can no longer convince his editor to accommodate his brand of work, which includes interviewing fiery, US-hating Latin American political leaders and braving typhoons in planes) as well as personal (his wife's recent death, which he can't seem to get over). Confused by his unforeseen return to domesticity and worried about his children's emotional state, he decides to reboot his family by taking up residence in a seemingly serene rural homestead - the catch being his new responsibility to revitalise the wildlife park that comes with it.
We Bought a Zoo is as banal as its title, with a predictable narrative that rarely strays into the moral ambivalence that defines the director's better works.
It's difficult not to see in advance Mee's rapprochement and romance with his employee Kelly Foster (Scarlett Johansson, left, with Damon, acting against type as a hard-edged, no-frills zookeeper) or his reconciliation with the rebellious Dylan, who is attracted to Foster's niece Lily Miska (Elle Fanning).
