Zookeeper

Posted May 25, 2012 by Speed - 0 comments

Griffin Keyes saw his marriage proposal to the love of his life, Stephanie, go down the drain as she couldn’t bare living with a zookeeper.

Five years later. Griffin is still the best zookeeper in the world but when Stephanie suddenly arrives back in town and states she’s broken up with her boyfriend, Griffin thinks he might have a second chance with her. However, for that to work he may have to change his life and leave the zoo to start working for his brother who owns a hi-class second hand car shop. This upsets the animals in the zoo who love Griffin and they decide to break their code of silence in order to help Griffin get the girl and keep him around.

Sound and Vision:
Zookeeper was entirely shot in HD and looks quite good, although not as good as one would expect from a movie shot with HD cameras. There are scenes that appear a bit blurry and one would expect things to be sharper than they are. However, overall the movie does like nice with warm colors, well-balanced contrast and decent black levels most of the time.

For a comedy, Zookeeper has a very active rear sound stage with plenty of use of the surround speakers for animal sounds in the zoo. Of course the main focus is towards the front and there we get a nice wide stage with clear dialogues.

Extras:
- Laughing is Contagious
- Bernie the Gorilla
- The Furry Co-Stars
- Creating the Visual Effects
- The Cast of Zookeeper
- Behind the Stunts
- Be the Bear
- Deleted Scenes
- PS3 Demo of Ratchett & Clank: All 4 One

If you look at the amount of extras, it looks like a big pack, but be warned as the extras all go for between 2 and 9 minutes. So in total viewing time there’s really not that much present (except for the 45 minute demo of the new Ratchett & Clank game)

Conclusion:
When I first saw the trailer for Zookeeper, I thought this comedy could have quite some laughs present. Talking animals, a typical romance edge but not the standard “boy meets girl, things go wrong but end up well in the end when everyone makes up”, and Kevin James being able to go berserk. Maybe my expectations were too high, but Zookeeper certainly doesn’t deliver.

There are a couple of chuckles at the start with Griffin’s marriage proposal going down the drain (and a similar scene at the end) but in between there’s actually little to laugh with. We’ve seen it all before, and the animals don’t really manage to add much weight to the movie either. Only Bernie the Gorilla has a somewhat funny scene about halfway, but that’s about it.

Young children who love talking animals may have a laugh with this one, but the rest of humanity will probably quickly forget the existence of Zookeeper, and that may be for the best. Boring!

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