Ed's Review Dot Com

Broken Road Productions, Columbia Pictures, Happy Madison Productions

Kevin James, Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, Ken Jeong, Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler, Sylvester Stallone, Cher, Judd Apatow, Jon Favreau, Faizon Love, Maya Rudolph, Don Rickles, Jim Breuer

Griffin Keyes (Kevin James) is in love with a hot girl, but when he offers marriage, she laughs at him because he’s a zookeeper. So Griffin has to review his life and whether it’s time to move on to a better job. But he’s a great zookeeper and the animals love him, and they don’t want to lose him. But what we never knew is that the animals talk, but never do because it always “turns out badly”. Zookeeper is a romantic comedy featuring talking animals. What could go wrong?

Nearly everything. This is a Happy Madison production, and unfortunately it follows suit to most of the other Adam Sandler productions. It’s partially Kevin James’ fault as well, but he seems like a nice guy. He just is stuck in the lovable oaf who spouts fat jokes and falls down a lot. The talking animals bit is pretty funny for a few minutes, but as it goes on, it’s way to predictable for the grown-ups and even boring for the kids. This should have been a decent movie, and they tried really hard, but it fell into the trap of being exactly like a slew of other films. I really wanted to enjoy this film, but was so disappointed. This is one of those films where everything funny is in the preview, and that’s never a good sign.

Granted there are a couple decent laughs (most which were in the preview anyway) and the depressed gorilla is a hoot, and Ken Jeong manages to keep his clothes on for the PG rating’s sake. But, unfortunately there’s just not enough here to make it worth the price of a ticket. Some kids might get into the talking animals bit, and there’s a chase, of sorts, to get to the airport before the girl leaves town (once Griffin figures out what he really wants). It was a disappointment, as this should have a been a really cute film.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog