We Bought a Zoo (2011)
Movie rating: 6/10
For those suffering through the ongoing housing crisis, We Bought a House would have been just as impressive a title. The scene in which journalist, father of two, and recent widower Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) decides to buy a new house will already seem fantastical enough to young workers today watching We Bought a Zoo. But true to its title, the film kicks into gear when Benjamin discovers what seems like the perfect countryside house, only to discover the property is in the middle of a zoo that closed several years before. Looking for a fresh start for his 14-year-old son Dylan (Colin Ford), recently expelled from school, and seven-year-old daughter Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones) Benjamin buys both the house and zoo. With the help of zookeeper Kelly Foster (Scarlett Johansson) and her small but loyal staff, they prepares to re-open the zoo to the public.
Directed by Cameron Crowe, We Bought a Zoo is based on a 2008 memoir by the real-life Benjamin Mee. As such, it’s one of the most Hollywood-ized, American-ized film I’ve seen in a while. The poster might say “Based on a true story”, but the end credits are more revealing, with a variation of the standard disclaimer: “The events, characters and firms depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or firms is purely coincidental.”
The real Benjamin Mee was British, but Crowe’s film pulls a U-571 and makes him American. The actual zoo Mee bought is Dartmoor Zoological Park in Devon, England, which the film transforms into Rosemoor Wildlife Park in California. The non-fictional Mee’s wife died after they bought the zoo and moved in, having made an informed, intentional decision to buy a zoo. The fictional Mee’s wife Katherine (Stéphanie Szostak) is dead at the start of the movie, and he buys the zoo only because he likes the house. The filmmakers made a few other changes, like turning an escaped jaguar into an escaped grizzly. I have no idea if the real Benjamin Mee had a romance with an attractive zookeeper he met after his wife’s death. In the movie it’s obvious that will happen as soon as you see the zookeeper is played by Scarlett Johansson.
I mention these facts only to show how filmmakers tend to be extremely flexible with the truth in movies “based on a true story”. Most of the time that’s fine. Unless you’re making a documentary, filmmakers are more than justified in changing details to make a more engaging story. We Bought a Zoo is very predictable and you can tell where it’s going from the start. But the journey is enjoyable because of a likable cast, decent screenplay, and effective direction.
Damon is an actor I’ve never been a huge fan of. Maybe it’s because I associate him with characters I found somewhat dickish (Good Will Hunting, Ocean’s Eleven, The Departed, the Bourne series), movies that revolve around characters trying to save Matt Damon (Saving Private Ryan, The Martian), or a little bit of both (Interstellar). But he’s still a good actor who can be enjoyable in the right role; I thought he was great in Oppenheimer. Here he’s very likeable and sympathetic, doing a great job of playing a husband still grappling with the loss of his wife, and a father trying his best to look after his kids even if he doesn’t always succeed. The scenes between Damon and Ford are well played, as father and son try to overcome lingering resentments and overcome their shared grief.
The rest of the cast is fine. Johansson is the standout because she takes a stock love interest underwritten on the page—Kelly is clearly supposed to become a surrogate mother figure to Benjamin’s kids, but this is only shown in a scene or two—and makes her feel believable. Kelly is more down-to-earth than we’ve come to expect from Johansson, given her glamourous star image. That’s a testament to her skill as a performer. Her relationship with Damon convinces only because the actors make it work. Thomas Haden Church is amusing as Benjamin’s older brother Duncan. Ford is adequate in a moody teen role that could have been annoying—helped by a cute romance with Elle Fanning as Kelly’s cousin Lily Miska, which if anything is broadcast with even less subtlety than that between Damon and Johansson. Jones is adorable as Rosie.
Sadly the zoo staff, meant to be a team of loveable eccentrics, are underdeveloped and fade into the background, never making as much of an impact as the movie wants them to. Crowe, who co-wrote the script with Aline Brosh McKenna based on Mee’s memoir, tries to sell us on the idea that Benjamin’s family and the zoo staff bond so closely, at one point Benjamin declares his love for all of them. But I never really bought it. The movie tells us that all the characters in the zoo become a kind of large family, but doesn’t show enough of that to be believable.
Being a Cameron Crowe joint, We Bought a Zoo has mostly the soundtrack you’d expect, with wall-to-wall boomer rock. There are some thuddingly obvious needle drops, as when Dylan is expelled from school and we hear “Don’t Come Around Here No More” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. To be fair, the film’s official soundtrack consists entirely of an original score by Jónsi, frontman of the post-rock band Sigur Rós. I like Sigur Rós, but the score wasn’t particularly noticeable.
There are plenty of plot contrivances. Benjamin is only able to pay for the zoo because of an inheritance from his father; OK, fair enough. Still, Duncan, who is an accountant, tries to warn Benjamin that the zoo will leave him and his children destitute. At one point, it seems like Benjamin will have to sell the zoo—until in an extremely convenient turn of events, he learns Katherine bequeathed a secret investment account to him worth at least $80,000, apparently because she predicted he would do something crazy and need to be bailed out. Good thing that worked out so nicely for him. The closest thing to a “villain” is Walter Ferris (John Michael Higgins), a comically strict U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector. I’ll leave it to you to guess whether or not Ferris approves the re-opening of the zoo.
On the other hand, the dramatic moments hit surprisingly hard. Much of the film is about how we navigate the process of grieving. Dylan’s petulant attitude ultimately flows from grief over his mother’s death—but so too does Benjamin’s desire to shake things up by buying a zoo. These feelings explode in an argument, during which Benjamin tells his son, “I'm sorry that your mother got sick when she did. Believe me. I'm sorry that you didn't get more of a childhood, man. That's just how that one went.” Benjamin himself is unable to look at photos of Katherine without breaking into tears. He finally admits to Kelly that his wife’s death is something he will never get over. Yet he eventually learns acceptance; to find joy in the memories his family created together while Katherine was alive.
Another unexpected part is a laughable early scene in when Benjamin interviews Hugo Chavez (Roberto Montesinos), described by Dylan (in voiceover narration that never returns) as a “dangerous dictator”. Chavez—and yes, the credits confirm this character is supposed to be him—rants and raves in cartoonish fashion. “Take this message to that American cowboy,” he yells at Benjamin. “We already gave a $10-billion oil credit to China. Swallow that, Mr. Danger!” A calm Benjamin then asks him what his favourite movie is, and Chavez responds, “Toy Story.”
The punchline is funny, but as the website Venezuelanalysis notes, “The aim of this scene [is] to show a president with sudden and radical mood changes.” The rest of the scene’s humour is unintentional, so blatant in its propaganda it feels bizarre and out of place. Another Venezuelan on Chavez’s presidential train is shown with a tattoo of a marijuana leaf, I guess to falsely suggest in this “based-on-a-true-story” family film that the Bolivarian government was somehow involved in drug trafficking. There’s no evidence as far as I can tell that the real Benjamin Mee ever interviewed Chavez.
A subsequent scene by comparison depicts U.S. capitalism in the most benevolent terms. Venezuelanalysis continues:
Minutes later Mee offers his boss McGinty a piece about the end of the world from the point of view of the generation who is going to save it. For [the journalistic piece] he would go to a volcanic eruption. His boss makes fun of this and offers Mee a column: “Life is like that now, if the newspaper goes bankrupt or is sold, you’ll still have a job”.
In response, Mee quits, but what they try to show is that the private media boss is compassionate and protective.
The scene comes off even more absurd than this description suggests. All this “private media boss” cares about is his employee’s well-being. Benjamin says he’ll quit if he can’t do the story, rejects the offer of a column, and walks out. McGinty begs Benjamin to at least let him lay Benjamin off, so he will receive severance pay. Benjamin refuses, tells his boss he loves him, then leaves. The movie does somewhat approach reality when real estate agent Mr. Stevens (played in a welcome surprise cameo by J.B. Smoove) alludes to the recent housing crash, since the film is set in 2010.
Politics aside, We Built a Zoo is more or less what I expected: a wholesome if predictable family film with fictionalized contrivances that, if I’m being honest, likely made it more enjoyable. But that’s because I’m a sucker for formulaic crowd-pleasing elements like a love story and a happy ending, which are part of the reason I watch movies in the first place. Serviceable feelgood fare.