REVIEW: Cameron Crowe Tries, and Fails, to Freshen a Treacly Tale in We Bought a Zoo

Cameron Crowe might be a large old cheeseball, but he’s never been a filmmaker to come across as cynical or calculatedly tricky. That’s one reason We Bought a Zoo doesn’t leave your heartstrings feeling very manhandled, despite like a treacly tale about how precisely a widower searching for a brand new beginning buys and moves with a fighting animal park along with his two beautiful, sad children. One more reason is Matt Damon, who underplays the role of still-grieving father Benjamin Mee whenever you can and brings a benefit of genuine frustration to his relationship along with his teenage boy Dylan (Colin Ford). Though overall the film’s still as honey-well toned since the golden sunshine that slants through nearly all its moments, the periodic look in a tough human edge means this isn’t only a workout in mawkishness, even though it’s also nowhere near to psychologically resonant since it aims being. We Bought a Zoo is founded on the sunday paper with the real-existence Mee, a classic Protector author who along with his family bought and reopened the Dartmoor Zoological Park in north western England. The film transports the knowledge to La, where Damon’s Benjamin finds themselves unable to maneuver track of his existence, experiencing recollections of his dead wife throughout his La neighborhood. He decides it’s time for just about any move, too as with his go to a home for his family, he stumbles onto a stylish 18-acre space getting a small complication — it’s furthermore a zoo that includes 200 animals, some endangered, also it must be elevated to straightforward or separated. Benjamin can be a reporter within the LA Occasions and knows nothing about pet care, just one look at his cherubic daughter Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Manley) communing having a couple of peacocks and also the mind’s composed. He quits his journalism gig, packs up his kids and heads away and off to mind up Rosemoor, an extremely shabby attraction that nevertheless includes a bear, some tigers and love interests for him as well as the sulky Dylan (the film’s working title most most likely being We Bought a Zoo and several Female buddies). We Bought a Zoo is Crowe’s first narrative film since the large-hearted mess that was 2005’s Elizabethtown, plus it finds the director working off an modified script initially put together by Aline Brosh McKenna, the writer behind slightly cruel chick-flick fare like I Don’t Know How She'll It, 27 Dresses as well as the Demon Wears Prada. The film has the style of something deeply conventional that Crowe, who’s also credited just like a film author, has attempted with very mixed success to punch tabs on personality. The tentative start a romance between Benjamin and also the gruff, overstressed zookeeper Kelly Promote (Scarlett Johansson), for instance, features a subdued, prickly sweetness once the pair sort out her exasperation the stranger has already established being an apparent hobby something essential to her. Nevertheless the puppy love that sparks between Dylan and Kelly’s protected youthful cousin Lily (Elle Fanning) seems extraneous, aside from since the latest showcase of techniques good Fanning is: She conjures from little material a lady of heartbreaking vulnerability and openness. Damon has carried out one fighting but quietly heroic single father this year, while using stakes substantially greater in Contagion, and also the clashes and reconciliations with Dylan will be the film’s most effective moments, all-too-identifiable good good examples of techniques a few fight when they have been more to keep in comparison as to the they’d would rather admit. It’s unfortunate that many other associations inside the film feel underdeveloped — Thomas Haden Chapel, playing Benjamin’s brother, will there be to supply exposition and supply doubt, Peter MacCready (Angus Macfadyen), who’s developed the zoo’s animal enclosures, can be a broad caricature, as well as the glimpses we have of Benjamin’s late spouse are glowingly idealized (best wishes rivaling that, ScarJo). Benjamin themselves tends toward the fuzzy — just like a reporter, the film’s introduction demands, he embarked on adventures around the globe, but always becoming an observer. This really will probably be his first real adventure — except controlling a zoo can be a business, not just a jaunt using the forest, as well as the miracle doesn't materialize. Rather, he finds themselves requiring to complete things like spend out personal personal bankruptcy-worthy amounts of money to correct around the block making the difficult decision regarding should you put a ageing, ailing animal to relaxation (a telephone call the film clumsily tries to connect to his need to overlook the memory of his wife). We Bought a Zoo might be the storyline from the nice guy, the kind of story through which Crowe has specialized. But despite moments of promise it never kicks into gear, won't get us installed on either your dog park or perhaps the family trying in order to save it. and never convinces us in the wild moment of giddy conviction needed to decide like the one inch the title. Buy a zoo? Unlikely. Sublet, maybe. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.