Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) is a recently widowed single
parent with two children: teenage son Dylan (Colin Ford) and younger daughter
Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). Unhappy, with everything in the city reminding
him of his late wife and Dylan expelled from school after he acts out, Benjamin
quits his job, rebuffs the advances of the attractive single moms at his kids'
school and tells his brother Duncan (Thomas Haden Church) that he's moving into
the countryside. He and Rosie find the perfect place, their dream home. There's
just one problem: it's a zoo. The place badly needs owners who care and have
the time, money and effort to bring the place up to scratch in time for its
next inspection. If it fails, the animals will be sent elsewhere and the
zookeepers will lose their jobs. Fortunately, this is Hollywood so the issue of
money is brushed over as Benjamin conveniently finds that his wife left him
thousands of dollars. He cashes the cheque and everyone gets to work. In
struggling to turn the place around in time, Ben finds himself falling for beautiful
zookeeper Kelly (Scarlett Johansson) and Kelly's younger cousin Lily (Elle Fanning)
flirts with the seemingly oblivious Dylan. As the family work to save the zoo's
future, they examine their relationships with each other and how the loss of
their mother has affected them.
If only every widower could quit his job, drop everything,
buy a dream house in the sunny California countryside and spend his days
quietly tending to a small zoo with Scarlett Johansson for company. It's a
lovely fantasy and it could have made for a silly, hokey film but thanks to a
combination of a good screenplay and warm, genuine performances, it works. Matt
Damon's convincing and sympathetic as the grieving widower and Scarlett
Johansson is very good, both witty and compassionate with an underlying steely
determination. The child actors are uniformly good and I loved J. B. Smoove's
cameo as the estate agent, although it was a bit strange to see him playing
someone other than Leon from Curb. As
for the inevitable life lessons about love, loss and so on that the family must
go through, they're not preachy and they weren't so sickly sweet that they made
me roll my eyes.
Sure, it's not groundbreaking and the ending's not exactly a
surprise but it's a good, honest piece of family entertainment. It's funny, well
acted and just darn enjoyable. How anyone could possibly dislike this film is
utterly beyond me. Oh, and it's a damn sight better than Battleship.
7 out of 10.
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