Yesterday my wife and I watched in "the man cave" this movie in Blu-ray from our Netflix account. The Director is Cameron Crowe who is one of my favorites of the current directors. He has made such movies as "Elizabethtown," "Jerry Maguire," and his semi autobiographic "Almost Famous." According to Wikipedia:
We Bought a Zoo is a 2011 comedy-drama film based on the 2008 memoir of the same name by Benjamin Mee. The film is directed by Cameron Crowe, and stars Matt Damon as the lead character....
Recently widowed Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon), still grieving his loss, starts life over by buying a large house with a zoo in the back. Although reluctant to take on a zoo and all of its animals, he decides to give it a try, delighting his 7-year-old daughter, Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones), but causing his 14-year-old son, Dylan (Colin Ford), to unhappily retreat into his artwork. The zoo staff, led by head keeper, Kelly (Scarlett Johansson), help....As would be expected in a Crow directed movie the soundtrack is wonderful. It has both original music and a compilation of soft rock/folk tunes by a large number of artist including Randy Newman, Dylan and Tom Petty. Unfortunately, only the original music, which is still quite good, made the released CD of the soundtrack.
The little girl,(Maggie Jones) is very good .
The movie is a little "darker" than I expected as a great deal of time is spent on how the main characters deal with the loss of their mom/wife. Before I saw the movie I was afraid it would be just another comedy like say "The Money Pit" but this is much deeper.
I am not a big fan of Scarlett Johansson but she was fine in her part. Matt Damon is quite good as the father.
I hid my eyes during the "snake scene."
This is a good movie for families, but at the same time is an adult movie that teaches important values about family and loss. . I liked it a lot.
