courtesy photo - - Kevin James howls at the moon in his latest.

Published on: Friday, July 15, 2011

By Trevor Ruben

The exploration of human and animal relationships is often complex. Discovering the bond of man to dog, the moral conflict of chicken meat processing and the often-profound love shared between a mother lion and her cubs can promote a challenge in art. For any movie, what it takes to strike gold in any attempt at animal humanization is a deep understanding of the true animalistic nature of mankind and a sincere translation from script to screen of the muted communication man and beast can share.

Or you can just have them talk – to a fat zookeeper. That works too.

Talking animals isn’t new, neither is slapstick artist Kevin James, and it isn’t even the combination of the two that makes Zookeeper watchable. Both elements are stretched to their limited capacities, resulting in a predictable plot with an acceptable amount of truly funny scenes, assuming you can stomach James’ style.

Zookeeper Griffin Keyes, after getting dumped while proposing five years earlier, gets a second opportunity with the way-out-of-his-league girl of his dreams. Only this time he has the help of his zoo animal friends.

Adam Sandler the Monkey, Nick Nolte the Gorilla, Cher the Lioness and more all give Griffin the animalistic advice he needs to achieve his goal, and that’s all there is to it. The cleverest humor surfaces when the animals are quibbling amongst themselves, often with Sandler’s Monkey bragging about his thumbs to the others. Without revealing too much, marital lion fights, wolf territoriality and an outcast crow all make for quotable scenes in and of themselves.

When it comes to Griffin following the advice of the animals, the humor falls into the hit-or-miss nature of any slapstick comedy. Griffin huffing and puffing on a three-wheel-bike doesn’t really pan out like it could have, though his show of masculinity at a wedding rehearsal dinner was simply an explosion of joyous absurdity.

For every simple premise often comes a simple plot, so don’t expect any revelations in the light-comedy-romance department. But if you’re buying the ticket, hopefully you already knew that. He learns a lesson about himself, thus allowing him to make the right life decision. Everything ends in a chase to get the girl. Thankfully Griffin gets to ride on the gorilla’s back instead of in a taxi.

Elsewhere you’ll find a growing bond between Griffin and the Gorilla, which beside from exemplifying Griffin’s care for the animals had very little payoff. Again, this element was traditional (aside from one half of the bromance being an ape), but in another absurd scene we get to see the gorilla enjoy a night out at T.G.I Fridays. They told everyone he was a human in costume, which alleviated all expectation of rationality and opened up the whole scenario for easy laughs.

This required alleviation is often the case, so if you can just let go of any high-art expectations and let the animal inside take over, Zookeeper will give you a good time.

Wait; did I learn something from this movie after all? Oh, god.