Animals to the Rescue

Imagine yourself working in a zoo and you're bad when it comes to the love game. Bad as in REAL bad. So bad in fact, that the animals in the zoo wish to break their code to help you out. That's exactly what happens to Griffin Keyes (Kevin James) in Zookeeper.



You see, Griffin proposed to the love of his life, Stephanie (Leslie Bibb) in the most overblown way he could think of, expecting a happy ending. Instead he receives one helluva rejection and spends the next 5 years being upset about it. Then one day his brother Dave (Nat Faxon) proposes he quit his zookeeper job and join him at the car dealership (a job which he does surprisingly well).

 

Oddly enough, Stephanie once again appears in his life AND would love for him to work there. This of course worries the animals, who wouldn't want that as they consider him the best keeper they have ever encountered. So Donald the monkey (Adam Sandler), Joe the lion (Sylvester Stallone), Janet the lioness (Cher), Jerome (Jon Favreau) and Bruce (Faizon Love) the grizzly bears, Barry the elephant (Judd Apatow), Sebastian the wolf (Bas Rutten) and Molly the giraffe (Maya Rudolf) all decide to break the code and lend their 'expertise' to help their buddy nab the girl... again.



Zookeeper has quite some promise to it. After all talking animals are always a good thing, right? Well, yes and no. While it is fun seeing so many big names voicing various zoo creatures, if uninformed you wouldn't have been able to tell (I believe I make a good example, haha). But they were voiced well, spoiled only by occasionally dodgy mouth animation. But when they start teaching him numerous tips that they 'think' will work well, it's just... excruciating.

 

But enough on that, onwards to the story. Zookeeper has a rather predictable storyline that feels like it has been done to death, but with enough wacky turns to avoid it being a bore. Main character Griffin is easily likable thanks to James. You could sense he never really let go of Stephanie, yet something tells you she might just not be what he needs.



And he has a delightful friendship with Bernie the gorilla (Nick Nolte) who just longs to check out TGI Friday's.



His work buddy Kate (Rosario Dawson) wasn't too bad herself and the two have lotsa crazy fun.



Kudos however to Joe Rogan as Gale, Stephanie's hilarious bullying ex-boyfriend who becomes quite a menace to Griffin.



Expect laughs along the way as there are quite a number of hilarious gags and scenes, but often some of those jokes just fall flat. This inconsistency, in addition to the cliché storyline seems to be the biggest drawback for this flick.



Perhaps I'm just being over-picky but based in trailers I certainly was expecting more than what I saw. It should still be noted however, that Zookeeper is still fun for the family (especially young ones) as there aren't that many family flicks out at the moment. Catch this if there aren't any good flicks screening or if you have lotsa kids with you.

2 1/2 Stars