RBR: Zookeeper

I was really on the fence about whether or not I should bother with this one. On one hand I enjoy Kevin James' work and I typically enjoy Happy Madison pictures, but on the other hand this looked terrible. I should have used my better judgment because this turned out to be as dreadful as the previews indicated. Kevin James stars as the genial zookeeper who is unlucky in love. That is until he realizes that the animals in his zoo can talk and they offer him advice about how to win over the lady in his life. It basically combines Dr. Dolittle and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, yet fails to have any of the charm or comedy, little as there was, from those films. To make matters worse, this suffers from the same obnoxious problem that James' buddy Adam Sandler's last film, Just Go With It when it comes to the romantic storyline - the male protagonist is bending over backwards trying to win over beatiful, yet vapid woman, when there's an equally beautiful woman who's nicer standing by their side waiting for them to realize that they have feelings for them. It's just plain insulting to the audience and it's getting overused way too much in Hollywood these. One of the other odd things about the film is how poor it looks. There are a lot of seems that are dimly lit that give the film a darker feel than what its going for. Finally, while the animals are voiced by an impressive list of stars that includes Sylvester Stallone, Nick Nolte and Adam Sandler, none of them give a notable performance that would make you clamor to see more from them in any sort of sequel. This film is just lazy and then made poorly on top of it. Even within the limited genre of talking animal films, there are actually several films that are better than this awful dreck. Rating: **