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Zookeeper
| Released |
29 July 2011 |
| Director |
Frank Coraci |
Starring
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Kevin James, Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, Cher, Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler, Sylvester Stallone |
Writer(s)
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Kevin James, Todd Garner, Adam Sandler, Jack Giarraputo, Walt Becker |
Producer(s)
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Todd Garner, Jack Giarraputo, Kevin Jame, Adam Sandler |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
101 minutes |
| Genre |
Comedy |
| Rating |
PG |
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Monkey business.
Kevin James is the titular zookeeper, who loves his job but can’t seem to get anything else in his life right. Most importantly he has trouble getting the girl. Just when all hope seems lost the zoo animals reveal that they can talk, and pledge to help James to get the girl because they think he is a really good zookeeper. Or something. The plot isn’t really the strong point of this film, which basically consists of a load of talking animals giving dating advice from the natural world, followed by James’s inept attempts to follow this advice.
Despite appearing to be a standard talking animal comedy you might expect from Disney, Zookeeper is really a romantic comedy, or at least it wants to be. What it mostly consists of is Kevin James making a fool out of himself in front of attractive women.
If you saw the posters you’ll know that Zookeeper also stars Nick Nolte, Sylvester Stallone, Adam Sandler and Cher. What the posters don’t say is that this film actually features the incredibly listless and bored voices of Nick Nolte, Sylvester Stallone, Adam Sandler and Cher, who completely fail to sound like they aren’t just reading lines off a page in a recording both. Probably during the lunch break of working on something they actually care about.
This actually really disappointed me. I think Nolte and Stallone can be brilliant actors in the right movie, and in the right circumstances shouldn’t they be perfect choices to voice a depressed gorilla and a macho lion? Well no, not really. While Nolte and Stallone may be strong, physical actors, when it’s only their voices on screen the result is pretty limp. Some actors can imbue a character with a lot of personality by just speaking, whereas some actors need to physically act out their roles in order to achieve that. The cast of animals in Zookeeper seems to consist entirely of the latter.
The only good thing about this film is Donnie Wahlberg’s performance as the lazy, cruel zookeeper who mistreats the animals behind Kevin James’s back. Maybe if he had been given more than a few minutes screen time and been developed into a proper villain this could have vastly improved the whole film. Unfortunately his role is wasted, like everything which could have been good about this film. And if there is one way to sum this film up, it would be to say that it is a total waste of time. It is a waste of the time of the actors who star in it, it is a waste of the time of the special effects people (who obviously did put in a lot of work into making the animals look good), and more than anything else it is a waste of time of anyone who goes to see it. Avoid.
- Bernard O’Rourke |
