Zookeeper - AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

Director: Frank Coraci

Cast: Kevin James, Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, Donnie Wahlberg, Ken Jeong, (Voices) Sylvester Stallone, Cher, Adam Sandler, Nick Nolte

"Plot": A group of zoo animals decide to break their code of silence in order to help their lovable zoo keeper (James) find love - without opting to leave his current job for something more illustrious.

What I have just seen can not be unseen. This may be the worst film I have ever seen - and I've watched 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'. 'Zookeeper' is unspeakably terrible, mind numbingly awful, stab your self in the eyes bad and may lead to you subconsciously fantasise about killing Kevin James. There was little hope of 'Zookeeper being good because number one it had the fat tub of sh*t from 'Paul Blart' as the star, but I couldn't imagine that it would be this bad.

Truthfully there is a lot more wrong with 'Zookeeper' than just its leading man, but he is the route cause. I do hate Kevin James; in fact I despise Kevin James. He isn't funny, he has an annoying face and his only supposed "appeal" is that he is fat and makes idiots laugh when he falls over. Oh and boy does he fall over. I counted that it was 5 minutes into the film before James fell into something. I assumed this would be a running trend and sure enough the punchline to every scene was James falling over or into something. And if he wasn't tumbling over he was fumbling his words. He would do this face when talking nervously that made me want to reach through the screen throttle him (I really don't like him). These are essentially the only two things James does in order to be "funny"; fall and stutter.

This is the film for pretty much the first 15 minutes and I was about ready to burst into tears. Then the animals start talking in order to help him get the girl of his dreams, Stephanie (Leslie Bibb) and of course hilarity ensues....wrong. The film plummets even further and reaches a point where there is no saving it. The advice given to James' Griffin is so retarded that anyone with half a brain would ignore it, but no he is such a f*cking idiot that he thinks the bears advice to growl at people is a good idea. That's not the only nugget of gold they give him; a wolf tells him to p*ss on trees to mark his territory,which he does, and a frog advises him to inflate his throat to intimidate Stephanie's ex boyfriend, which he of course does.

Then there's the girl he is chasing, Stephanie, who is so out of his league she should have punched him if he even talked to her. But this is some sort of parallel universe where fat people that fall over a lot are perfect suitors for gorgeous blonde women. But no, this is not enough for Kevin James to have one woman pursue him, fellow zookeeper Rosario Dawson must also have an unexplained want for this man that falls over a lot. It is just annoying to see this talentless man that falls over a lot get these women that wouldn't even bat an eyelid at him - and this is more unbelievable in a film where animals talk.

The animals themselves are voiced by some well known people with Sylvester Stallone and Cher voicing lions, Adam Sandler voicing doing his Billy Madison shtick for a monkey and Nick Nolte plays a gorilla that loves TGI Fridays. That's right the restaurant. In a shameless plug the gorilla asks if it as good as it looks to which Griffin replies "It's pretty great!". He may as well have turned and looked at the camera. But then it gets even worse in a particularly torturous sequence they go inside the restaurant with the cover that they are going to a costume party. At this point I thought it couldn't get worse; how wrong I was.

The very loose plot somehow gets stretched out to 90 minutes, which of course means lots of falling over; whether it be off a chair, while getting into a car or OFF A BRIDGE James just kept falling over. he story is so predictable and stupid that it isn't worth complaining about because you know how it ends after having watched the trailer. There are stupid sub plots with Donnie Wahlberg (who doesn't seem to understand this wasn't a serious movie) and a job at a car showroom that are ultimately there to pad out out the running time.

I must however admit I laughed at the monkey. There is something about a monkey that sounds like Billy Madison that just made me chuckle. He didn't even say anything funny he just had a stupid voice but for some reason I chuckled. I was almost ashamed of myself. There is also potential in the two lions who bicker about the male lion Joe just lying around all day while the lioness does the work, which could have been amusing but they don't run with it because Kevin James hadn't fallen down for five minutes.

This is a travesty to film and actually made me angry because there seems to have been no attempt to make a watchable film. Even for kids this is trash. Hopefully Kevin James never works again and Adam Sandler will stop putting him in the films that he passes up on. But that's just wishful thinking because someone somewhere will watch this and be amused at a fat man that falls off an ostrich. Yes he fell off an ostrich! F*ck this movie.

Rating:



This video from the guys at Redlettermedia perfectly sums up how terrible this film it and I thought I had to put it on here because they share my hatred for these type of films. Enjoy