Zookeeper

Starring: Kevin James, Rosario Dawson and Ken Jeong
Featuring the voices of: Cher, Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler, Jon Favreau, Don Rickles and Sylvester Stallone
Directed By: Frank Coraci
Screenplay By: Nick Bakay, Rock Reuben, Kevin James, Jay Scherick and David Ronn
Story By: Jay Scherick and David Ronn
Produced By: Todd Garner, Kevin James, Adam Sandler, Jack Giarraputo and Walt Becker
Distributor: Columbia Pictures/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures
Rating: PG
Running Time: Approximately 102 minutes
Website: zookeeper-movie
Budget: $80 million
Genre: Comedy
Release Date: July 8, 2011

Former “King of Queens” star Kevin James and Adam Sandler keep it all in the family in the aptly-titled Zookeeper.

James’ wife, Steffiana De La Cruz, has a fairly prominent supporting role in the film, and his older brother, comedian-actor Gary Valentine, makes an appearance. Meanwhile, Sandler’s wife also makes a brief appearance as a waitress at a popular chain restaurant that must’ve paid top dollar to land the amount of product placement time it receives.

James not only tackles the title role, he’s one of five credited writers, and one of five credited producers (along with Sandler, whose Happy Madison Productions is a producing partner on the film) of this boring summer “comedy” with a promising opening sequence that eclipses just about everything else that follows.

Griffin Keyes (James), a zookeeper at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo, gets on bended knee and proposes marriage to his longtime girlfriend Stephanie (Leslie Bibb) following a ridiculously romantic horseback ride on the beach that plays like something straight out of a Harlequin romance. In an inspired twist, she shoots his proposal down. Her reason: though happy that he’s gainfully employed, she can’t get past the fact that he’s happy just being a zookeeper.

Flash ahead five years later, Griffin is now the zoo’s head zookeeper, and in a rather convenient plot contrivance, runs into his flirtatious ex at his brother’s (Nat Faxon) wedding engagement party being held at the zoo. It’s clear that Griffin still hasn’t gotten over Stephanie, and she uses that to her advantage, possibly regretting how abruptly she ended things with him years earlier in light of his professional advancement. She butters him up with compliments about how great he looks and how much potential he has all under the curiously attentive watch of some of the zoo’s animals.

The animals at the zoo love and respect Griffin because he loves and respects them unlike another zookeeper there, played by New Kids on the Block member Donnie Wahlberg, who mistreats them. Griffin’s apart of the extended animal family there as it were, and when they’ve all observed him faltering in his personal life one too many times, they decide to chime in. At first their interaction is subtle, but since this is a big budget kids flick, subtlety quickly takes a holiday.

It seems the animals at the zoo are harboring a secret: they can talk! Not just animal speech, mind you. They can communicate just like humans.

Griffin’s initial freaked-out reaction to the discovering the animals’ secret is the only sensible way to go, but little else in the film plays out as truthfully. The script is just a belabored rehash of clichés and leaden set pieces that don’t really connect in any realistic or funny way. It often plays to the lowest common denominator.

Considering the heavy hitters that are listed among the film’s voice cast, including Cher and Sylvester Stallone as a lioness and her mate; Adam Sandler, as a wisecracking capuchin monkey; Nick Nolte as a gorilla: Jon Favreau and Faizon Love as bickering alpha bears; Maya Rudolph as a giraffe; and filmmaker Judd Apatow, as an elephant — none of it ultimately matters because the material is just plain lazy. You‘d think Cher and Sylvester Stallone having a marital spat would generate a genuine laugh or two. Not here my friends, not one.

And why Rosario Dawson signed up to play the chief veterinarian at the zoo who has developed feelings for Griffin, who’s completely oblivious to that fact, of course, is a mystery. Was she jonesing to do a comedy? Did they make her an offer she couldn’t refuse? It’s a paper-thin role that she manages to bring some spark to, and she has an easy rapport with James. It’s more of a brother and sister match though than a lucky S.O.B. who probably sold his soul to the devil to catch such an impossibly gorgeous woman coupling.

Zookeeper is one of those films that truly is for the littlest of children, and even they might not walk away liking it all that much.