We Bought a Zoo, Review

I am not enough of an animal lover to fully understand the connection between caring for animals and overcoming grief. The last thing I need to do with my life, after losing a loved one, is shovel horse shit.

In the movie, We Bought a Zoo, Matt Damon plays a single father, who after the loss of his wife, buys a run down zoo in the belief that returning the zoo to its former glory will console his grieving children and make them happy again.

It always appears in movies that the humans are helping the animals but its ultimately the animals that help the humans. In Free Willy. In Water for Elephants. In Fly Away Home. The relationship between animals and humans is as old as cave paintings, but the therapeutic power of animals is a Hollywood construct.

Or is it?

I suppose what may come close to the unconditional love of a parent, if that parent is gone, is the unconditional love of a pet, a faithful dog can fill the void left by death? The movie wants us to believe that learning to love animals equips us with all the necessary skills we need to love humans. When one becomes an animal lover, one becomes a human lover. As Elle Fanning dorkily asks Scarlett Johannson in the movie 'Which do you love better? The humans or animals?"

Not to take anything away from people who have found that animals are therapeutic, and that this power, depicted in We Bought a Zoo and a long lineage of family movies, is not just a Hollywood construct. I saw a news story the other day about a rape victim, who, together with her therapist, learned to care for and ride stallions, a symbol of masculinity, and in turn, came to trust men again.

In this movie, once Matt Damon sees how happy his (absolutely adorable) daughter becomes after feeding the animals, he decides to buy the zoo, despite the fact that it's fiscally irresponsible and sucks up all his inheritance. It doesn't matter, when a character stops at nothing to make children (and animals) happy, who wouldn't root for them? The movie treats this as a given, and doesn't earn it.

It's frustrating to see a skilled screenwriter like Cameron Crowe refuse to create any real antagonist and mess around with plot contrivances to keep the zoo in the family's possession, for example, an investment drops out of the sky at precisely the moment it's needed. The family are never in any real danger of losing the zoo because pesky zoo inspectors, bad accounting and freak rainstorms are only temporary nuisances. There is no real drama. Only cloying scenes.

When the movie is busy with its silly subplots, involving a zookeeper called MacKready, putrid sentimentality, the over use of annoying Sigur Ros songs, and cringe worthy dialogue "I like the animals, but I love the humans." I clung onto Matt Damon for dear life, who makes this noble effort believable. He is an incredible movie star. An actor who gives us total sincerity and raw emotion when all he has to do is stare at a computer screen and struggle to pay bills.