Animal Crackers in my soup - The Zookeeper

3 out of 5 Popcorn Kernels

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The Zookeeper works, although I'm not sure on what level.

It is very sophomoric at times, and the believability of the animals talking becomes rather annoying, as the lip syncing and verbal jokes are all too human in nature. I always get annoyed at movies where male animals are turned on by the human female form to such a degree that you would be under the impression that they have actually "experienced" it. I have never been turned on by female monkey's, lioness', or the giraffe form - no matter how high the skirt was.

The Zookeeper feels like a Saturday morning children's skit, where the actors break the Third Wall to tell us what the letter-of-the-day is. Television however is usually free...not where you pay an admittance price, concessions, and parking to see. This doesn't make The Zookeeper a flop, it just makes it watchable...and ultimately, predictable.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of the talking animals in The Zookeeper are adults, and they are trying to assist in an adult scenario. These movies work better when there are children interacting with younger animals, or guided by the adult ones. Talking animals are a childish whimsy fantasy, and the human lead needs to have this quality in order to bring it all together.

Monkey See Monkey Do...

The Zookeeper involves a...well zookeeper, named Griffin (Kevin James), who loves his job, and the animals he cares for. They love him too. But one day a woman he once dated and pined over for years, Stephanie (Leslie Bibb), comes to visit him. The only reason she never went further with him was she just didn't do the zookeeper thing (or zookeepers for that matter) - but she still loves the zoo (and in a sense, Griffin too). Griffin is a bit overweight and slightly clueless, and she is curvaceous and beautiful - but according to the new Book Of Hollywood, this is called a match made in heaven. Griffin also works with others that love their job too, especially Kate (Rosario Dawson), who works in the vet-hospital at the zoo, who is his closest friend and adviser. All these, beauty and beast, come to Griffin's aid when they see he is still in love with this girl, but lacks the skills to actually hook her.

What confused me about this plot, is that if Griffin had already dated Stephanie, wasn't there a point in his life where he had already hooked her without the help of talking animals? What makes matters more challenging is that there is another man after Stephanie, so this adds a competition and deadline to the plot which cause the animals to act faster in revealing their ability to speak and for Griffin to act.

While The Zookeeper is fun to watch, it suspends too much belief from the audience (adult and child alike) to believe that an adult would take the sort of advice that these animals serve - and that is mostly because Griffin seems much smarter than he is suppose to be. His antics are clownish, but his words are very wise, caring, and have forethought. He is already very typical of the male species in the real world. Him falling clumsily over things, or knocking things over, isn't funny, it's just distracting.

What these animals needed to really help him with, was his resume in getting a new job - because the staff (with the exception of one), are ideal caregivers along with Griffin. He could volunteer on the weekends, visit as a patron, do a webinar already. But that would be too much for a movie like this to think about. Had this been a movie where Griffin had fallen asleep in the monkey house and dreamt the animals were talking and giving him advice, this movie would have worked a lot better...

...but maybe that would have been a bit too cagey. This one is fun, light, well acted, inwardly funny - but it's not a day at the zoo.