Zookeeper

Before I write about this 'entertaining' 'movie' that is 'meant' for 'all ages' and supposedly 'totally doesn't suck,' I would like to point out something I've noticed about trailers.

Having wasted several hours of my life every week for the last four months watching movies, I've seen quite a few trailers.  In the watching of said previews, I have come to a conclusion.

You ready for this?

All the trailers feature movies that are roughly on the same level as the film you're about to watch.

What does this mean?  Well, in essence, if you're about to watch a shitty unfunny family film, you're going to get trailers for family films, most of which will be shitty and unfunny.  Occasionally, of course, there will be exceptions to the rule.  However, these exceptions are just for movies that have huge budgets and/or appeal.
Take Zookeeper, for instance.  There was a trailer for a new Adam Sandler film called Jack and Jill where he will play both himself and his obnoxious twin sister.  Yes, Sandler has gone the Eddie Murphy route at last.  There was also a trailer for Happy Feet 2, which may not be a shitty family film (I wouldn't know, I hate penguins personally, they taste like shit.)  Then there was a trailer for some other shitty family film that I've already forgotten.
Actually, there's a second thing I noticed about trailers:  The bigger the company expects the movie to be, the more trailers you will have to watch before you get to the actual film.  A huge, $200 million film is going to have a literal ass-ton of movie trailers in front of it.  Zookeeper had 3.  Can you guess where this is going?

Yeah, Zookeeper isn't a very good film and it's hard to write about a movie that just isn't very good.  It's not disastrous and it's not one of those 'Oh my Lord how the hell did this get made?' sort of flicks.  It just...well, sucks in a very boring, mundane way.  Even the movie theater and the distribution company realized this.  Hell, I think half the audience realized this.  Zookeeper only exists as a vehicle to take advantage of Kevin James' Paul Blart popularity.  Mall Cop made waaaay more money than it had any right to, and Columbia Pictures decided to capitalize on it.  I understand this, but I don't have to like it.
So what did I see during my 104 minutes in one of the tiniest screens the theater had to offer?  Talking animals, pee jokes, poop jokes, a ball-licking joke that NOBODY laughed at, some misogyny and a whole lot of stupid.
Kevin James plays Griffin, who is supposedly an awesome zookeeper.  The movie demonstrates this by having him be really nice to the animals and whine a lot.  Apparently whining about being a loser makes zoo animals respect you and enjoy your company.  Eventually the animals fear that this awesome zookeeper is going to leave them to pursue an absolute idiot of a woman, Stephanie, who is well played by Leslie Bibb.  By well played I mean she makes the character shrill, obnoxious, idiotic, selfish, bitchy and utterly unlikeable.  Also, she's a perfect stereotype of  the 'treat her like shit and she'll love you forever' sort of woman that filmmakers still asume every guy wants.  Standing in Griffin's way is the fact that Kate (Rosario Dawson) actually likes him for some reason and Gale (Joe Rogan) is still dating Stephanie. 
Look, anyone who thinks the typical moviegoer will believe for a second that any guy would turn down Rosario Dawson OR be intimidated by Joe Rogan should not be allowed to write scripts.  Even worse, Rosario Dawson is the only person who seems to be trying in this entire movie beyond 'better do something stupid so I can get my 10%!'  I don't know why, but it looks like she is actually trying to act, despite the fact that absolutely nobody else in this film gives a shit.  I like to call this the Christopher Walken style of acting: No matter how much the flick sucks, stay awesome.
Joe Rogan, however, does not have the acting skills to be awesome, let alone stay awesome.  Fortunately this movie mostly calls for him to look oddly orange and be a douche.  So...yeah, I don't know why they even bothered to give him a stage name.
Ken Jeong and a Wahlberg are in this too, but the less I say about their parts, the better.
The film really has nothing else going for it.  Griffin takes advice from the animals, no matter how stupid it said advice seems.  Inevitably every piece of advice leads to painfully unfunny scenes such as him peeing on a plant in the middle of a crowded restaurant, making bullfrog faces, splitting his pants and being a dick to Stephanie because that's what the lion says women like.  If only he had taken the monkey's advice and tossed some poo around, we would have had ourselves a par-tay!
The biggest problem with this movie is that it is yet another terrible PG film that wants to have its cake and eat it too.  It wants to appeal to the kids, but can't do anything aside from stupid potty humor and terrible overacting  on the animal's parts.  The giraffe is a black lady who wants to sing, the monkey is...something...the two bears bicker like a gay couple, the elephant is a whiny hypochondriac, the lion is a douche and the lioness is the matronly type.  That's it.  That's all you get.
To try and appeal to the parents and all seven people who think Kevin James should be a leading man, they throw in the love plot.  Like I stated above, nobody with half a brain should even be capable of believing that someone would give up something they love to be with a superficial bitch.....Right?  Nobody in their right mind could EVER quit a job that gives them 110% satisfaction on a daily basis to become someone they're not just to make some dumb, ditzy hot chick happy....

Nahh...that's just idiotic!

So there you have it.  Zookeeper.  To this day, the only time I have ever walked out of a movie is The Animal.  The only reason I went was because I was bored, 20, and living in Mississippi without a car; yet I still chose boredom over finishing that pile of crud.  I would have walked out of Zookeeper too if I wasn't writing this review.
So go see this flick if you love Kevin James and want to see him pee on a plant and make weird barking/growling noises.  (Don't get me wrong, I think the guy can be genuinely funny....as a sidekick or a bit player.  He just doesn't do squat to justify being a leading man.)
If you want to do something really fun that involves lions and tigers, go play the Zookeeper DS game instead.