Movie Review: "We Bought a Zoo" Is A Bad Buy

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 12 December 2011 11:37

Written by Lloyd Carroll

We Bought A Zoo
co-written/directed by Cameron Crowe
starring Matt Damon, Peter Riegert, Scarlett Johansson

Based on the true story of British journalist Benjamin Mee -- a journalist who always put himself on the front lines for a story and earned a well-deserved reputation for his fearlessness, We Bought A Zoo reflects his derring-do. One of his dreams was to open a zoo, and he did just that by taking over the dilapidated Dartmoor Zoo in Plymouth, England.

It's somewhat ironic that a film based on a true story has so many plot points that it just doesn’t feel authentic. Director/co-writer Cameron Crowe, who did such outstanding films as Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous, has shifted the locale from Great Britain to Southern California.

Mee (Matt Damon) is a recent widower who is taking care of his two kids -- the rebellious teen Dylan (Colin Ford) and his overly precocious seven-year-old daughter, Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones).

Dylan, a talented but moody artist, has a tendency to get expelled from schools and draw paintings of decapitations and other gruesome images. Does Benjamin call in a mental health professional to meet with his son? Of course not!

Mee is having problems at work, where his editor Delbert McGinty (Peter Riegert) hasn’t run his pieces recently and rejects his latest proposal for an article. What does Benjamin do? He quits in a huff even though Delbert begs him not to. His boss graciously says that he’ll lay him off just so he can collect unemployment.

Despite having to take care of a family in a rough economy, Benjamin succombs to pride, bizarrely rejecting any compensation made out of pity.

With no job and a son who is expelled from school, Benjamin decides that what everyone needs is a change of scenery. Rosie sees a house that she loves and Benjamin decides that the place is perfect as well. The only problem is that in order to buy his desired abode, he has to also purchase the rundown Rosemoor Zoo that has been operated by the state of California ever since its previous owner died.

Despite having no experience taking care of animals, Benjamin gives it a go and puts a fortune into fixing up the zoo in the hopes of opening it in six months. He is helped by a skeptical but able staff led by head zookeeper Kelly Foster (Scarlett Johansson).

Of course Murphy’s Law kicks in and whatever can go wrong, it does. Solomon the Lion nearly breaks out of his cage; Buster the Bear does find a way out of his enclosure and nearly devours Benjamin; finally, the zoo’s main attraction, its beloved 17-year-old tiger, Spar, is lethargic and may have to be put to sleep. Just when it looks as if the ship has been righted, we are informed that San Diego County is hit with Biblical rains, which is highly unusual for any time of the year, let alone July.

We Bought A Zoo hopes to be a holiday family film but it is a rather dark movie where the topic of death is always hovering. The final scene, where Benjamin shows his kids the restaurant where he met his deceased wife, is particularly cloying.

Crowe has us believe that she comes back to life at the table where she and Benjamin met back in the 1990s and that his kids start talking to her. “Hi Mommy!” screams Rosie.

Despite its zooey narrative, We Bought A Zoo features strong performances from alpha Hollywood talent. Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson are terrific and do the best that they can with a flawed script. Thomas Haden Church, who takes on the role of Benjamin’s brother Duncan; JB Smoove, who plays a novice real estate agent; and John Michael Higgins, who portrays a fastidious zoo inspector, provide much needed comic relief.

The yeoman work of those who toil in zoos worldwide for little remuneration is nicely saluted. Unfortunately, the awful plot contrivances of We Bought A Zoo make you feel as if you’ve spent too much time in the elephant house when you leave the theater.

December '11 Digital Week II

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 11 December 2011 20:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Becoming Jane (Echo Bridge)
Anne Hathaway’s breakthrough performance in Julian Jarrold’s biopic about how a young Jane Austen became a beloved author highlights a refreshingly lighthearted costume drama filled with strong characterizations by James Cromwell, Maggie Smith and Julia Walters--only James McAvoy as Austen’s beau is too lightweight.

With richly detailed sets and costumes, the movie’s visuals are ripe for a hi-def upgrade, and the excellent Blu-ray has the right amount of grain; extras include a commentary, deleted scenes and an on-set featurette.

Design for Living (Criterion)
One of Noel Coward’s wittiest plays was transformed by director Ernest Lubitsch into a charming 1933 romantic comedy minus the acerbic Coward wit. With the trio played by Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper and Frederic March, this Design is amusing if surprisingly superficial.

Dazzling-looking black-and-white visuals are courtesy of the Criterion Collection’s superb Blu-ray transfer; extras comprise scholar William Paul’s commentary, Joseph McBride interview about Ben Hecht’s adaptation, and a superior British TV condensation of the play introduced by Coward himself.

Friends with Benefits (Sony)
Traversing territory recently trod by Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman in No Strings Attached, this routine comedy pits another charming and sexy actress--Mila Kunis--against a charmless Justin Timberlake, who again shows his glaring inability to enact a real character.

Like the other movie, there’s nasty dialogue galore, and it’s fun to hear a beautiful actress spit out tart dialogue, but the game Kunis is wasted next her costar. The Blu-ray release sports a solid transfer and extras that include a commentary, outtakes and deleted scenes.

The Help (Touchstone/Dreamworks)
Kathryn Stockett’s mega-bestseller about racism in 1960s South is transferred to the screen with minimal fuss and its basic tear-jerking mechanisms intact, courtesy of writer-director Tate Taylor.

This story of black servants stoically retaining their dignity during Jim Crow is one that most audiences can watch and feel good about from a safe distance, while those who don’t connect can still admire the unfussy acting by Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney, Sissy Spacek and Viola Davis. (The others are too broad in their characterizations.) The picture is excellent on the Blu-ray transfer; extras include deleted scenes and an on-set featurette.

Life, Above All (Sony)
Oliver Schmitz’s heartfelt drama about superstition and disease in a small African village is an emotionally wrought tragedy that’s lined with a sliver of hope.

In this story of a teenage girl who tries to reverse a stigma that’s attached itself to her family when her infant sister dies, there are moments of melodramatic excess, but for the most part, the film is gripping, stark and brilliantly acted. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; the lone extra is a making-of featurette.

Medea (e one)
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s typically idiosyncratic adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, which stars ill-at-ease opera diva Maria Callas in the title role, is highlighted by intriguing visuals despite a modest budget.

These include the centaur and splendid use of Turkish and Italian locations, including Pisa’s Field of Miracles that refrains from showing the famous Leaning Tower. On Blu-ray, the film looks especially good despite the limitations of the film stock. The lone extra is Tony Palmer’s fine 90-minute documentary about Callas.

Now and Later (Cinema Libre)
Bring together a Wall Street whiz kid running from the law and a spiritual (and sexual) Latina who takes him under her wing and you have this partly interesting, mostly ludicrous Last Tango in East L.A.

If you tune out the tin-eared dialogue--much of which sounds like New Agey outtakes--there’s lots of sex--some of which doesn’t look simulated--to keep one’s interest. Even if their line readings are mainly wooden, James Wortham and Shari Solanis handle the physical intimacy deftly. Hi-def doesn’t really help the movie’s low-budget look; extras include deleted scenes and cast interviews.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (Fox)
In honor of the 70th anniversary of American sailors’ heroism at Pearl Harbor, this 1970 fictional reenactment of the prelude to and consequences of the Japanese attack resurfaces in hi-definition.

Meticulously showing belligerent Japanese planning and the defensive U.S. posture, the movie has almost unavoidable and plodding sanctimony, but it’s still a worthwhile recreation of historic events. The Blu-ray release has an overload of film-like detail; included are both the U.S. and the Japanese versions (which includes an additional 10 minutes), with loads of  extras including new and vintage featurettes and interviews.

2011 World Series Champions (A&E)
When the St. Louis Cardinals won its 11th  championship in October, it was a fitting end to the season for baseball fans sick of hearing about the dominance of the league’s richest teams, the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies, none of whom got very far.

This highlight-rich retrospective--narrated by Mad Men star (and St. Louis native) Jon Hamm--shows off the team’s season-long run, which culminated in those amazing final weeks when the Atlanta Braves’ epic collapse allowed the Cards to clinch a playoff berth on the final day. Shot in hi-def, the World Series games look stunning; included among a bunch of extras is the clinching NLDS Game 5 against the Phillies in its entirety.

Vietnam in HD (History)
On the heels of its excellent release WWII in HD comes this two-disc set containing four hours of hi-def footage from the most divisive U.S. war of the 20th century. With so much film footage--well-known or barely seen, much of it quite shocking--at their disposal, the filmmakers have made a thorough overview of the war from 1964 to 1975’s fall of Saigon, with several soldiers and family members’ own stories woven into the rich fabric.

Even in its often ragged state, this color footage is extremely powerful in HD, and it gives the resulting document a “you are there” immediacy for viewers.

DVDs of the Week
Come Have Coffee with Us (Raro Video)
Nearly forgotten Italian director Alberto Lattuada--who co-directed Fellini’s debut, Variety Lights, and also made the unforgettable 1964 comedy Mafioso--helmed this frisky 1970 comedy that stars the irrepressible Ugo Tognazzi as a man who gets involved with three spinster sisters after their rich father dies: predictably, amorous adventures ensue.

Although the movie is not much different than other erotic Italian comedies of its era, Lattuada’s light touch and Tognazzi’s presence distinguish it. The lone extra is an interview with film critic Adriano Apra.

Inside Hana’s Suitcase (Menemsha Films)
This unbearably moving documentary is yet another Holocaust story--but since so many will never be told, this one must be. When a young Jewish victim’s suitcase surfaces at Tokyo’s Holocaust Museum, its director and her students attempt to piece together its history. They discover that she died at Auschwitz as a teenager, but her older brother survived and now lives in Toronto.

Director Larry Weinstein’s re-enactments--which normally don’t work for me in documentaries--are so restrained they snugly fit in the film. When Hana’s brother goes to Japan to meet the kids who have “resurrected’ his sister, it’s so rawly emotional that I dare any eyes to stay dry in the movie’s final reels.

Milestones/Ice (Icarus)

Robert Kramer’s epic study of Americans trying to come to terms with their disillusionment over their lost 60s idealism, Milestones is an epic snapshot of our nation at a specific point in time in a brilliant and original mash-up of documentary and fiction.

This 200-minute masterwork of reportage--made over a period of years and finished in 1975--gets its first DVD release some dozen years after the filmmaker‘s death; also included is Kramer’s espionage-paranoia meditation, Ice (1969), which is more relevant historically than artistically.

CDs of the Week
Britten, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Glyndebourne)
Benjamin Britten’s 1959 opera based on Shakespeare’s fantastical play of sprites, fairies, mechanicals and lovers is given a superlative hearing in this 2006 recording from England’s summer Glyndebourne Festival.

The orchestra positively shimmers during the nocturnal interludes, while countertenor Bejun Mehta (as fairy king Oberon) and soprano Kate Royal (as one of the lovers, Helena) head a terrific cast, with an inspired group of youngsters making up the impish fairies’ chorus.

Honegger, Orchestral Works (LPO Live)
Masterly Swiss composer Arthur Honegger was a member of Les Six, a group of French-based composers from the first half of the 20th century.

This recording of live performances by the illustrious London Philharmonic Orchestra under the steady baton of conductor Vladimir Jurowski--highlights Honegger’s brilliant orchestral work, from the shimmery Summer Pastoral and propulsive Symphony No. 4 to the glorious chorale of his final composition, the seasonally apt Christmas Cantata.

NYC Theater Roundup: Off-Broadway Doings

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 09 December 2011 10:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Neighbourhood Watch
Written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn

Burning
Written by Thomas Bradshaw; directed by Scott Elliott

For his 75th play, the astonishingly prolific and proficient Alan Ayckbourn has created the scarily prescient Neighbourhood Watch, which premiered in North Yorkshire after riots engulfed London and other British cities last summer. With Ayckbourn’s typical precision and wit, the play explores relevant themes of law and order (or lack thereof), as a gated community finds itself at the mercy of outside lawbreakers and resorts to extreme measures for self-protection.

It’s a pair of new arrivals, the middle-aged and God-fearing brother and sister Martin and Hilda who, after fending off a would-be juvenile intruder in their own backyard, decides to start a neighborhood watch group with other like-minded folk in the Bluebell Hill development. The siblings are joined by local gossip and widower Dorothy; former security man Rod; cuckolded husband Gareth; and music teacher Magda, whose tyrant of a husband Luther wants nothing to do with them.

Martin, despite his essential passivity (and pacifism), becomes leader of the group, turning Bluebill Hill into a mini-police state with armed patrols, mandatory ID cards, barbed-wire fences and even stocks for egregious lawbreakers (which don’t work so well for anorexic teenage girls, who are able to slip out of them). Martin soon begins to enjoy the perks of being in charge, and there are not only whisperings of future political office--the group’s success at curbing crime is receiving attention from the media--but also the attention of Gareth’s supremely unfaithful wife Amy.

Ayckbourn, of course, plants weeds in this supposed garden of paradise, as the responsible law-and-order crowd can’t see past its paranoia until it is too late, and a home is burned down and one of the group is shot dead by the police who think a weapon is being brandished (it’s only a statue of Jesus, while Martin’s equally benign garden gnome was thrown through the window during an earlier melee).

As always, Ayckbourn sets up outlandishly farcical situations--especially Martin’s dalliance with the ravenously sexy Amy--and transforms them into comic nirvana by grounding his characters, however eccentric they are, in a basic realism. Like last year’s My Wonderful Day--another highlight of the annual Brits Off Broadway festival--Neighourhood Watch finds dark humor and humane insight in the everyday, even if the ending lacks a certain comic finesse.

Under Ayckbourn’s own spirited direction, which takes the full measure of his foolishly endearing characters, the formidable cast of eight is superlative separately and together, combining subtlety and broadness in a kind of ridiculously grand tango.

Frances Grey’s nymphomaniacal Amy, Alexandra Mathie’s protective Hilda and Matthew Cottle’s naive Martin are best, but kudos also go to Eileen Battye (Dorothy), Terence Booth (Rod), Phil Cheadle (Luther), Amy Loughton (Magda) and Richard Derrington (Gareth). In fact, everything about Neighbourhood Watch is so effortless that it appears to be a frivolous farce, not a corrosive satire.

In Burning, playwright Thomas Bradshaw obsesses on sex and death: there are numerous gay, straight and interracial couplings, funeral/memorial/cremation scenes, even a movie house murder. But there’s no discernible point of view or credible psychology, for all the screwing and killing.

Bradshaw’s story, which encompasses two generations of characters living in New York and Berlin, can be described by its sexual pairings: incestuous German neo-Nazi brother and sister; two men and 14-year-old Chris; Chris and another man, who later dies of AIDS; grown-up Chris with Franklin, cousin of Chris’ half-sister Josephine’s husband Peter; Peter, who is black, and Josephine; Peter and Gretchen, an African-born prostitute while he’s in Berlin for a gallery opening of his paintings.

It’s telling that the lone sexual act not enacted onstage is Franklin’s first sexual encounter, when he was raped by a hermaphrodite when he was 17: he only describes it to Chris before they have sex. Now that would have been something to see! The problem with so much simulated sex is that it turns the actors into mere performers: these sex scenes add nothing to our understanding of their relationships, except to discover that most of these people love anal sex, an unilluminating revelation in the scheme of things.

Bradshaw’s fixation on anal sex makes little sense on the evidence he presents: for example, if Peter really wants to screw Gretchen anally because Josephine doesn’t want to, why isn’t that shown earlier when husband and wife have sex, which is obviously loving and tender and consensual, but without any begging (from Peter) or whining (from Josephine) about what kind of sex they’re going to have.

Scott Elliott’s sharp-edged direction smoothes many bumps in Bradshaw’s script, but those that remain make for a nearly three-hour slog. Although the large and talented cast falls just short of turning Bradshaw’s chess pieces into real people, Larisa Polonsky makes the most of her brief time onstage to create a sympathetic, touching Josephine, another memorable performance by an actress who, with One Arm and now Burning, is quickly becoming one of our more reliable performers.

Neighbourhood Watch
Previews began November 30, 2011; opened December 7; closes January 1, 2012
Brits Off Broadway @ 59 E 59, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
http://britsoffbroadway.com

Burning
Previews began October 20, 2011; opened November 14; closes December 17
The New Group, 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
http://thenewgroup.org