Walter is a nit-picker and a bit of a sadist, threatening to deny the place a license if fences don't comply within a fraction of an inch. The villain is Walter Ferris ( John Michael Higgins), an anal-retentive animal control officer who enforces strict standards involving the care and housing of the animals. (So would we all be, if we had to live alone for 16 years in an efficiency apartment.) Should Spar be put down? Kelly and Ben have an emotional debate. One of their first differences involves Spar, an old Bengal tiger who is in deep depression. She can see that Benjamin has a lot to learn. Kelly is a great-looking woman (after all, she looks like Scarlett Johansson), but she's all business, dedicated to the welfare of the animals. How many times has my own accountant entreated me, "Roger, whatever you do, don't buy a zoo!" Well, that's the function of a good accountant. The place was once a private zoo, shut down for reasons involving money and regulations, and Kelly Foster (Johansson) minds the animals with the help of Peter (Angus Macfadyen), a pipe-puffing Scotsman, and Kelly's teen niece, Lily ( Elle Fanning), who seems not entirely unaware she's in a script that may require her to sooner or later kiss Dylan.īenjamin's brother, Duncan ( Thomas Haden Church), is an accountant who urgently advises Ben not to buy a zoo. He finds an ideal house, which the real-estate agent only gradually explains comes with its own menagerie. Dylan is nabbed for shoplifting, and Benjamin, a journalist, decides it's time to leave the big city and raise them in the country. He's raising their kids Dylan ( Colin Ford), in his mid-teens, and Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones), who is 7. ("What do we do to make the Robin character interesting?" "He always has a monkey on his shoulder.")Īt the film's outset, Benjamin Mee is still in mourning after the death of his wife. He's never seen without a monkey on his shoulder, though that's his only point of interest. We even see Patrick Fugit, immortal as the hero of Crowe's " Almost Famous," as a member of the zoo staff named Robin Jones. Matt Damon makes a sturdy and likable Benjamin Mee, and Scarlett Johansson, as the head of the zoo's animal keepers, seems adamantly unaware that she's in a script that requires her to sooner or later kiss the hero. Not that the film is without charms as a choice for the holiday season. The result is too much formula and not enough human interest. In adapting these facts into the movie "We Bought a Zoo," all Cameron Crowe has done is move it to Southern California, supply it with a staff of character actors, add two romances and a villain. The Dartmoor Zoological Park in Devon, England, was opened in 1968, closed in 2006 and then was purchased by the Mee family.
There really is a Benjamin Mee, and he and his family really did buy a zoo.
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