We Bought a Zoo (2011) - Crowe's terrific family film

♥♥♥

 

+ Best Animal Movie of the Year

+ Best True Story Movie of the Year

 

A pleasant-looking - and pretty packed - poster for Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo

 

A widower and father of two children, who are still struggling with intense grief over the loss of their mother, makes a fresh decision in quitting his job and moving them all to the countryside to a closure-threatened zoo.

We Bought a Zoo is a wholesome film that has something for the whole family as it takes a true story and glosses it up, Hollywood-style. It is elevated by a circle of fine performances from well-cast actors:

Matt Damon (The Departed (2006)) is excellent in the lead; Thomas Haden Church (Cardboard Boxer (2016)) is at times wonderful as his comic sidekick brother; John Michael Higgins (Big Miracle (2012)) as a cantankerous park inspector is a good fit for the funny-man. Both children, - Colin Ford (All Kids Count (2011)) and Maggie Elizabeth Jones (Identity Thief (2013)), - do good jobs,  and Jones as Rosie Mee is unreasonably cute at the same time. Add Scarlett Johansson (A Good Woman (2004)) as a sweet zookeeper with something at stake, and you have the main players of the film.

We get lots of really neat footage with animals in the all-around handsome production, which also features several delightful songs that underpin the story's message, which is about responding 'why not' more often to the opportunities in life instead of mechanical 'whatever.' The film's original songs are by Jon Thor Birgisson (Aloha (2015)) of Icelandic band Sigur Rós, some of them co-written with great Californian co-writer/co-producer/director Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous (2000))

The film succeeds sometimes in being touching, funny and uplifting, even though it borders on feeling like a parody at times, a parody of the film it so earnestly want to be; relevant but always family-focused; a bit like a faith-based film - without the faith. It is in-step with the very sweet, almost other-worldly universe that most Crowe films take place in.

We Bought a Zoo is written by Aline Brosh McKenna (Annie (2014)) and Crowe, based on Benjamin Mee's autobiographical novel We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of A Young Family, A Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives (2008).

 

Related posts:

 

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 50 mil. $

Box office: 120 mil. $

= Minor flop

[We Bought a Zoo was released December 23 and runs 124 minutes. Several things are changed from Mee's true story, including moving the plot from England to California. Crowe went to see Damon on the set of True Grit (2010) to convince him to play the lead. Filming took place in California in and around January 2011. The film opened #6 to a 9.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it actually went on to do better in the three following weeks in nearly the same amount of cinemas (3,117 - 3,163), (which is quite rare), although never going above #6, indicating strong word-of-mouth. It grossed 75.6 mil. $ (63 % of the total gross) domestically. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Australia with 7.7 mil. $ (6.4 %) and Japan with 5.3 mil. $ (4.4 %). Roger Ebert gave the film 2½/4 stars, equal to this review. We Bought a Zoo is fresh at 66 % with a 6.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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