We Bought A Zoo (2012)

There are two major reasons to go and see We Bought A Zoo. Firstly Matt Damon is in it, and he's playing a nice guy, think Good Will Hunting. Secondly It's a Cameron Crowe film. Forget nonsense like Vanilla Sky and just remember the great Cameron Crowe films like Say Anything, and one of my all time favourite films 'Almost Famous'. The man may not make perfect films, but he makes films with a lot of heart, and films with great musical backdrops, which really helps warm this film to me.

The story is that Matt Damon, having lost his wife to Cancer a few months previous, is trying to raise his two children, a young girl, and a fourteen year old boy. The boy is starting to get into trouble at school and eventually gets himself expelled, he also has issues with his dad, who is doing the best he can to help him. Because of this, and a general feeling of being trapped, Damon quits his job as a columnist and decides to relocate the family somewhere new so they can start afresh. After viewing house after house and nothing really exciting him he stumbles across one house which seems perfect, wide open spaces, a nice big house, a decent price. The one catch is that it is a zoo. So he decides to take on the responsibility (he's a bit of an adventure addict) and despite no knowledge in zoo maintenance decides to get the zoo into ship shape condition and open again in time for the summer. To help him he has a very small staff lead by Scarlotte Johansson, and also involving Patrick Fugit (of Almost Famous fame... but all grown up).

First of all, to those people that are put off by the very idea of a film based on such an absurd story, it's true, it happened in England, though the film is set in America. Second of all, whilst the story may seem a little hokey, designed to tug at the heart strings and such, it doesn't feel like that when you're watching it, because Cameron Crowe knows how to make an audience feel without actually making them aware of it. Don't get me wrong, the film is far from perfect, it's probably a little too long, and yes, the whole thing is a little by numbers, but it's got heart, so you forgive it, and it has Matt Damon, so you forgive it some more.

There's a healthy dollop of humour in here as well, ranging from the absurd to the really rather clever, you've got romance, the young boy and a girl who lives on site. You've got the brother, played by Thomas Hayden Church, who is initially sceptical but is won over (he provides a lot of the laughs by the way). You've even got a genuinely good message for people watching it. That all you need is just 20 seconds of insane courage to do something; the example is to ask a girl out that you like, but it also applies to any of the dangerous adventures that Matt Damon goes on in the prelude to the film. It's important because it teaches people that sometimes you've gotta take a risk, and that if you put everything you have behind it, then it will work out somehow, if you really want it to, and I worry that too many people play it safe these days.

Overall the film was really enjoyable, I recognise that it has flaws, but sometimes you have just got to ignore them and watch a film that is just enjoyable and nice. Okay? So yeah, niceness won me over.