The annoying thing about ZOOKEEPER isnt that its a bad movie, though it is, and a very bad one at that. The annoying thing is that Kevin James in the title role is so very good. It sets up a damnably uncomfortable tug-of-war between hating the flick and yet enjoying the work that James does as a sad-sack head zookeeper at the Griffin Park Zoo, using advice from his animal charges to win the woman he loves. The script he is working with is a jumbled mess of interludes that relate to one another tangentially at best, existing in a space-time continuum where times arrows dont so much flow as bob and eddy somewhere outside the rules at work in ours. The writing careens wildly among mutually exclusive tones of maudlin, crass, ridiculous, stupid, and dull. It is only James, which his intuitive gift for physical comedy and a quirky emotional sincerity, that makes the slog a little less sloggy. Key word: little.
When he is in his best form, connecting with a depressed gorilla or swinging from silk curtains with sublime abandon over a dance floor, there is a whiff of greatness. The rest of the film, on the other hand, reeks. His object of his characters affections is a vapid, overly groomed bubble (Leslie Bibb). Her latest boyfriend (Joe Rogan) is a psycho, which serves to make her seem even more unpalatable for having an interest in him. They are not so much characters as reasons for Griffin to react. The right woman is, of course, right in front of him in the form of Kate (Rosario Dawson), the zoos vet, and Dawson, injecting a vibrant authenticity to her character, makes the choice even more obvious.
At 102 minutes, it seems to run for several hours as Griffin bumbles his way through a story that makes less and less sense by the minute and in which the conceit of a man receiving advice from animals about how to succeed in the human world becomes thinner and thinner. Not to mention less funny, and considering it began as only mildly amusing, thats not a good thing. The horde of writers. James included, responsible have nothing resembling a herd instinct, having turned out product that wouldnt know narrative cohesion if they fell over it. Coupled with direction that misses the point, it is an experience of a profoundly disappointing nature. As for product placement, always a key factor in any film in which Adam Sandler is involved (he is a producer here), its not so much a product that is placed, as the actors, who have a wild night out while bonding at a chain restaurant.
ZOOKEEPER at least has the virtue of being good-natured. If only it left its audience feeling something other than ripped-off.
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