REVIEW: We Bought A Zoo (2011)

Back a few years ago when I was in grad school, I worked as a barista at one of the local Starbucks. Every Friday morning a man came in and ordered a double espresso. I didn’t think this particularly strange until one of my co-workers informed me that he took the drink to the cemetery. His wife had died nine months earlier, and the double espresso had been her regular order. Each week he ordered the espresso, shared some kind words with us, and took the drink to his wife. I had a chance to talk to him on a few occasions, and when I did, he talked endlessly about her. About the trips they’d shared in their twenty years together. The house they’d just purchased. The children they’d recently talked about having. And though he smiled a great deal, the sadness of her passing was evident in every movement, every gesture. He seemed torn between the past and the future, unable to fathom either as if stuck in some sort of earth-ridden purgatory. The espresso and weekly visits to the cemetery were his chosen method of both honouring his wife and his attempt to move forward.

In We Bought a Zoo, the new film from Cameron Crowe based on the memoir by Benjamin Mee, Matt Damon plays the title character, also trying to deal with the loss of his wife. Unlike my former customer, however, he has two children, and his older son (played by Colin Ford) is continually acting out. When he loses his job, he risks everything in the purchase of a private zoo, hoping to provide both a new start for his children and himself.

Damon is particularly good here, conveying the heaviness of a widower, as well as the anger and confusion of suddenly being left alone to raise his children. He is both hopeful and sad, and from moment to moment seems unsure of the world around him. He is utterly believable, and we willingly go on the journey with him.

I was particularly grateful for the script, which doesn’t attempt to do more than it needs to, and stays away from any melodramatic crisis. Insead, it sticks to the gritty details of a family trying to figure it out. Too often filmmakers make the mistake of thinking a bigger crisis is necessarily more compelling. Here, Crowe reminds us that the details matter more.

Scarlett Johansson shows up, and she’s steady in her role, if not spectacular. Thomas Haden Church plays Mee’s brother, and as always, his presence only enhances the narrative.

If there’s one difficulty with the movie, it’s the stock characters filling out the zoo’s staff. Their few scenes of “jocular interplay” seem forced and not terribly believable. I suppose this is unavoidable, but humour generally works better from a lead or (at the very least) a secondary character, especially with the overall tone in a picture like this one.

All of us will at some point spend time in purgatory; we’ll lose a loved one or suffer some tragedy and do our best to take a step away from the sadness towards something better. How we deal with our loss will vary depending on who we are and the choices we have available to us. For some, it will be an espresso and a visit to the cemetery. For others, it will be photo albums and wine. And for some rare individuals, it will be a group of orphaned animals in an abandoned zoo.

****1/2 out of Five.

This Is It (2009)

 

The Man in our Mirror

About halfway through the movie I started to feel it, a gentle tug that became more insistent until I slowly lost myself in a sea of memories and quiet sadness. For people of a certain age, Michael Jackson is synonymous with adolescence. For us, he was more than a pop star. He was the closest thing we had to a global celebrity, a living Truman before the internet revolution decreed that every celebrity's life would be lived under continual scrutiny. From the stories of his childhood abuse to his culture changing stardom, from icon to iconoclast, Michael Jackson was an enduring presence in our cultural consciousness.

Until the past decade. Somehow, we needed the absence. Needed the separation. With the distance, however, something happened. Jackson the pop star was buried and raised to the place we assign former icons who no longer hold sway in pop culture, a living historical figure. This Is It was to be his comeback, his last chance to become that star again. His untimely passing, however, prevented us from seeing what that would have been like, from witnessing his final show.

And what a show it might have been.

The movie is compiled footage from his tour preparation, and cut in a manner to be, in effect, a concert for the viewer. A few more interviews would have given the narrative a bit more propulsion, and there are places where the film sags, but Jackson's star power is never in question. With his translucent white skin and sunglasses balanced over a porcelain face, he seems more a ghost than a fifty year old man. His voice is still crisp, and his creative vision is astounding. From the half finished clips we see in the film, it's easy to predict that This Is It would surely have been one of the greatest (and most expensive) shows of all time.

Mostly though, it isn't Michael the performer that holds you, it's the force of the memories dancing along inside you when he sings Thriller and Man in the Mirror. It's the soft, childish platitudes he mutters to his crew that strangely fill you with hope and the love his dancers and fellow musicians genuinely hold for him.

It's easy to be critical of Michael Jackson. Easy to call him Wacko Jacko or a creep (if you believe the rumours), but for four decades he lived in front of us, creating moments forever embedded in our memories of times past. Moments we recall twenty years later that remind us who we were back then, and in so doing, help us see more clearly what we have become.

More than his musical and creative genius, his dominance of pop culture was the result of his ability to help us look in the mirror and to do so in a manner untainted with cynicism. Michael Jackson was not a saint, nor was he just another celebrity sinner. He was, in a strange way, the perfect reflection of our ideals and failures, an adult of great charity and a child who never grew up. And in that, he was just like us.

***** (Out of five) For the memories
***1/2(Out of five) For the film

Creating Stuff

I'm not sure how often it happens, but enough that I find myself saying at least twice a week "I wonder what I should read." Or a similar version of that when it comes to movies and TV shows: "What should I watch?" In a time where choices are (literally) endless, it seems harder these days to make a simple decision.

There's something pretty ludicrous about that, of course, considering all the information available for anyone able to punch a request into Google. But then, those sites can be overwhelming as well. If I punch in "new movies", for example, I get 2.7 billion entries. (And yes, that figure is accurate. Almost 3 billion!) You need research to do more research just to find a damn movie! Many of my friends who have kids and busy lives don't even bother looking because they don't have time.

Why Stuff?

I've spent the past four years working on a mainstream fantasy novel that I hope will be finished this summer. In the meantime, I wondered what I could do to help my friends and like minded people who enjoy quality stories but don't have the time to do a whole lot of digging for them.

And so, I created Stuff to Read and Watch.

Let me say very quickly that the tastes on this site will not be for everyone. They aren't supposed to be. And while I write Fantasy, I prefer the mainstream novels to the niche markets of speculative fiction. I like the old fashioned epic journeys first perfected by Tolkien and Lewis, now continued by writers like Robert Jordan and Raymond Feist and Brandon Sanderson. I read widely enough in all genres, however, that there should be something for you here, regardless. I admire literary books, but I generally don't read them unless they're relatively fast paced. (There are exceptions, like Jeffrey Eugenides' great novel Middlesex.) I find prose heavy novels and experimental fiction a difficult slog. I prefer an absorbing, accessible story. Something that will take me on a journey and make me laugh and cry and, if at all possible, remind me why I'm on this road and where I'm going.

My taste in movies is similar. I don't hold a great deal of love for quirky, independent films or blockbuster noise that causes me to swallow my intelligence. I prefer stories that allow us all to hop on and enjoy the journey together. From Indiana Jones to The Hunger Games, there are a number of great movies, some we may have forgotten about, that convey a sense of joy and adventure.

Lastly, let me just say that this site is supposed to be a place where busy people can stop by and get some ideas, but not just from me. The hope is that people will interact with one another and provide their own suggestions.

There are a million sites out there, and Stuff is just one of the multitude. I'll do my best, however, to provide you with a place to stop by if you're looking for a new story. If you have any suggestions, feel free to drop a comment or email me, I'd love to hear from you.

Steve