Most people these days have pets; dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters. You name it and somebody has probably got any kind of pet you can think of, and most pet owners will say that when they talk to their pets (as many do) that their pets can understand them and even respond as if they know what their owner wants from them. Hollywood knows this all too well so with the magic of special effects and numerous cartoons there have been many movies about animals that can talk, Zookeeper is one of them.
Griffen Keyes (Kevin James; The Dilemma, Grown Ups) is a zookeeper with a beautiful girlfriend and the world at his feet, he works in his own exotic pet paradise and all his animals love him. On the day he proposes to his girlfriend Stephanie (Leslie Bibb; Iron Man 2, Confessions Of A Shopaholic) she dumps him, because of all things he is just a lowly zookeeper. From this moment on the movie takes a few steps away from logical thought so bare with me (personally I don't see anything wrong with being a zookeeper, it sounds cool but that may just be me). Upon hearing that Griffin has been dumped by his girlfriend the animals (yes they talk!) hatch a plan to get him back with his girlfriend so that he doesn't leave the zoo. Clearly he hadn't been talking to the animals about WHY he was dumped, but I digress.
Using their natural abilities to find a mate, the animals decide to teach Griffin how to win back the love of his life, and hilarity ensues, in theory anyway. Cue Kevin Smith making an idiot of himself and doing things no man with any common sense would do, regardless of whether he was talking to animals who talked back.
There's a wide variety of animals too, and many different personalities which is fun for the children showing the interaction between them is comedic. However after reading the cast list I was amazed that there were A-list or even B-list stars in the movie, let alone doing the voices of the animals. Sylvester Stallone (The Expendables, Rambo IV) and Cher (Burlesque, Stuck On You) are Joe the lion and Janet the lioness respectively and Adam Sandler (Just Go With It, Grown Ups), who acts as executive producer on the movie is Donald the monkey but their voices are nearly unrecognisable. This may be in part to do with the lack of proper advertising for the movie or the idea that the voice work makes the actors so unrecognisable. I'm not sure which one explanation is better but if the actors were given better direction they may have given the adult audience a chance of recognising the actors so therefore given a little bit of joy while their children laughed at the talking animals. A perfect example of this is Adam Sandler, who surely should have known better as executive producer when he decided to put on an accent for the Donald the monkey, making him even more unrecognisable than the rest.
I can understand how some actor's voices may even be unrecognisable no matter how famous they are so I can give Nick Nolte (Arthur, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore) a pardon on this criticism. I'm not that familiar with his work and especially recently I can't recall anything that he's been in other than The Hulk in 2002. However, after learning that he played Bernie the gorilla I can say that he did a good job of expressing the hurt and anguish of the isolated animal and was also able to have fun alongside Kevin James as well in a TGI Friday scene that will stick in your memory long after the movie's finished (and not just because of the blatant product placement).
Of course the real love interest is Griffin's co-worker, Kate (Rosario Dawson; Unstoppable, Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief) and Dawson really enjoys her role. It's obvious to the adult audience who Griffin should be with from the moment she enters the movie so the audience just have to ride out all the animal bodily function jokes until the inevitable conclusion.
Zookeeper isn't that great for adults, kids may enjoy it but in the end if you've seen one of these kinds of movies you've seen them all. Kevin James is good at physical comedy and if only they still made silent movies then he'd do well, he's surprisingly agile for a man of his size. Rosario Dawson and Leslie Bibb are good as the love rivals for Griffin's attention, Dawson is warm and charming and would be an ideal opposite for any leading man and Leslie Bibb shows a good turn as the high maintenance girl who wants everything, and is funny with it too. Despite the almost nonsensical plot and Ken Jeong's bizarre cameo as a creepy reptile expert, Zookeeper does have its moments however I would only see it if your kids beg you to and if that's the case then you can at least watch it on DVD, or put it on so the kids can watch and you don't actually have to be in the room.
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