Matt Damon can do anything. He can solve the maths, he can fly like an angel, work the spy thing and the cop thing, and now he runs a zoo. Okay, so he needs a little help from a passel of zookeepers, but the end result is totally worth it. We Bought A Zoo is a trip I’d take anytime.
Based on We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives Forever by Benjamin Mee, the film tells the story of a man who decides to chuck it all and start afresh after the death of his wife. Moving the action from the U.K. (the real zoo is Dartmoor Zoological Park in England) to SoCal here in the States, the story takes a few liberties with the real-life tale, but those changes make the story easier to follow as well as easier to tell in the limited span of a feature film. How do you manage to find yourself after the world has dumped all over you? With lions, tigers and bears. Oh, my!
