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.