It probably says something that while hefty everyman schmo, Griffin Keyes(Kevin James), is having his marriage proposal dumped like a ton of bricks, I was more concerned about the well-being of the poor horse they were riding at the time. Think of the worse things you thought when you first saw a clip of Zookeeper, and amplify them by ten. Forgiveness for this hairy atrocity might be possible if it was simply Kevin James and a few monkeys swinging from the occasional tree. But it's not. There's an earnest attempt to say...something, I'm not sure what, about love. And in trying to actually have deeper meaning in the midst of a gorilla riding shotgun to T.G.I. Fridays, Zookeeper deserves to have poo flung in it's general direction.
Griffin has been suffering in silence for five years ever since his girlfriend, Stephanie(Leslie Bibb), put the kibosh on their relationship. Why? Because he's just not exciting enough for her. He's not dangerous enough, although I would say any guy who cleans up elephant dung is a pretty brave dude. Griffin is the Larry Crowne of zookeepers. He does everything, and is generally loved by everybody, including the animals. They love him so much that they break their animal silence for him, in order to help him win Stephanie back. Why anybody would listen to a giraffe's opinion about anything other than neck pain and the taste of leaves is beyond me, but Griffin takes the suddenly chatty animals' advice in stride. Ok, he runs and hits his head a couple of times first(because it's funny), but honestly he's not nearly shocked enough to be having a conversation with a stick in the mud lion. Their advice? It goes about as well as it should, which might be the only hint of sanity in this trainwreck.
I'm actually something of a Kevin James fan, but he is making it really difficult to stay in his camp after this and that dismal Mall Cop movie. What's he got on tap for 2012? John Smith: Bathroom Attendant? It's not like these are miserable performances by him, either. He genuinely throws himself into this, and I don't totally fault him for how laugh-free Zookeeper is. It's the mind numbing script, that I suspect they're hoping you don't notice under the deluge of celebrity voices. Sylvester Stallone, Judd Apatow, Cher, Adam Sandler(of course), Jon Favreau, and many more had a cup of coffee and apparently their own pick of which animals to choose from because some fit, and others make zero sense. Nick Nolte is an isolated gorilla who sits in his corner in a silent rage....until he and Griffin get all chummy chummy. Kinda works for monkeys who can't do much but throw banana peels at you. It's sorta scary with a massive ape who can fling you against the wall like a water balloon. And yet it's not half as scary as the wasted talents of Rosario Dawson, who I suspect had a mortgage payment due when she agreed to this.
Parents may be able to dismiss this is a painful, but beneficial 100 minutes(20 minutes too long!!) if it were clever enough to even keep the kiddies occupied. The animals have their moments to shine, but this is really a story about Griffin trying to win back his girlfriend, and frankly no kid will give two craps about that. There are desperate attempts at child-friendly humor(Griffin on a kiddie bike), but it's almost an afterthought. As if the zoo animals were some sort of grounding influence, the film actually gets weirder when they're not on screen, because then we're hit over the head with just how much of a moron Griffin really is. It's also when James is forced to carry all of the physical comedy, and that gets real old, real fast. Where's my negative star rating? Pfeh, I'll have to settle for this...
