Oh Cameron Crowe! Where, oh where did you go? Once upon a
time you made movies I really enjoyed. now I have to return to my copies of Say Anything and Almost Famous for a taste of your past glory. Maybe it’s me who’s
changed and I no longer fall for the genial affability of your characters
wrapped up in kitschy sentiment. Crowe’s latest serving of pop sentimentality
is based on a memoir by Benjamin Mee. That the film is “based on a true story”
makes me dislike it even more as that’s generally a red flag that it’s trying
to absolve itself of criticism by virtue of the fact that it really happened.
We Bought a Zoo
is about a thrill-seeking journalist played by Matt Damon who, in the wake of
his wife’s death, quits his job and uses his dad’s inheritance money to buy an
18 acre farm that is home to a defunct and dilapidated zoo. His older brother
(Thomas Hayden Church, channeling his character from Sideways), drawing on his own experiences, warns Benjamin not to
engage in simple escapism. But there wouldn’t be much of a story if he didn’t
forge ahead with a project that would ultimately become life-affirming and
self-actualizing. And by the way, it will also help his teenage son Dylan (Colin
Ford) in the end, a youth whose social troubles are signaled, with no sense of
irony whatsoever, by his propensity for creating art that is morbid in nature. “Why
can’t he express himself with less disturbing images,” his obtuse art teacher
laments. I’m not making this up. This is Crowe’s idea of how to depict a
teenager with issues.
