By Sarah Sluis
Director Cameron Crowe hasn't made a feature film in six years. 2005's Elizabethtown fell flat on its face, a huge disappointment for those looking for another one of his memorable movies with heart, like Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, or Say Anything... The trailer for his next movie, We Bought a Zoo, just released, but the movie footage portends a filmi that's more tears-and-hugs than anything else he's done before. Think Marley & Me, but with zoo animals instead of a pet dog. For that reason, I actually think this movie may be a commercial success on par with Jerry Maguire, though for different reasons. 20th Century Fox certainly seems to think so, too, giving the movie a prime Dec. 23 release date, the more perfect to capture intergenerational audiences in search of warm-fuzzies around the holidays.
Matt Damon plays a widower with two children. He buys a house that comes with a backyard menagerie addition. Scarlett Johansson appears to be his love interest, who may have come on initially to help out with the zoo animals. Elle Fanning is a sympathetic next-door neighbor and Thomas Haden Church Damon's father.
The trailer serves us classic Crowe-esque elements. Damon quits his job in a public way, a la Jerry Maguire. His father, giving Damon advice--"Attempt to start over. Sunlight. Joy"--reflects the spare, affected dialogue that Crowe has always done so well. Where the movie gives me pause is during this voice-over from Damon: "You don't even need a lot of special knowledge to run a zoo. What you need is a lot of heart." Okay, Crowe is a sensitive filmmaker who specializes in poignancy, but that crosses the line into cheesy. In general, I wasn't totally happy with the pacing of the trailer, especially when it came to the beats between jokes. As a big fan of Crowe's films, I hope that the trailer was overplaying the sensitive and the actual movie will be hiding more nuanced emotional content.
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