2011 - WE BOUGHT A ZOO, entertaining thanks to one really good performance

A very slight film from one time wonder boy Cameron Crowe.  No need to rehash this story since it's in the title.  It's generally known that Crowe was a big admirer of Billy Wilder a director who really knew how to blend comedy and drama into his films.  However We Bought A Zoo seems more like a Frank Capra film than a Wilder film and we're talking a Frank Capra film from the 1950's when Capra was in his big time artistic and creative decline.

This film is kind of a mix of comedy, family drama and romance.  It has some good scenes and some good actors but it you are allergic to cute little kids beware because this one has a real scene stealer.  The underrated Scarlett Johnansson is a zoo keeper and potential love interest and Thomas Hayden Church plays the brother of the main protagonist.  He isn't in the film enough but he's very funny

 

What makes this film very watchable is Matt Damon as the widower father looking to restart his life with his family by buying a decrepit zoo.  Damon pulls off the comedy and family drama stuff expertly and manages to sell even the silliest scenes in the film with his sincere performance.  He makes this film worth seeing.

 

An uneven film at best, this is another example of actors coming to the rescue of a less than perfect screenplay.  

The film was written by Cameron Crowe and Aline Brosh McKenna.  The running time is an overlong 124 minutes. 

1992 - SINGLES, surprisingly dated 90's romantic comedy

One time wonder boy Cameron Crowe wrote and directed this surprisingly dated comedy about the love lives of some young adults in Seattle.  Set during the period where the "grunge" trend was developing. If the film has any interest at all it's as a look into a time when bands like "Pearl Jam" and "Alice in Chains" were beginning to take off.  The rest of the film, not so great I'm afraid.

 

The story is really conventional boy meets girl stuff.  Campbell Scott is a city planner who meets environmentalist Kyra Sedgwick.  They begin a relationship which results in her getting pregnant, him proposing marriage, her losing the fetus and both ultimately breaking up.  Will two such attractive people rediscover their love for each other?  In the meantime perky coffee shop waitress Bridget Fonda has the hots for grunge band leader Matt Dillon who is fronting a group called "Citizen Dick."  Will Dillon finally realize that cute Fonda is the girl for him?

 

This is an extremely light weight story to hang a film around and it really depends on the actors, the dialog and the situations the writer creates.  In this case the actors are fine, the dialog at best is predictable and rather banal and the comedic and romantic situations are not very interesting.  It's all been done before and done better in other films.  I've seen films from the 40's and 50's which seem more contemporary then this antique.  Singles actually got fairly good reviews at the time of it's release for what that's worth.

Cameron Crowe is a big admirer of Billy Wilder and even published a series of interviews with Wilder.  But as it turned out, Crowe was no Billy Wilder.  After some initial success with films like Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Jerry McGuire and Almost Famous his career his descended into movie mediocrity.  Singles was in some ways almost a preview of where his career ended up with films like We Bought A Zoo, Elizabethtown and Aloha.  

The running time is 99 minutes.

2015 - ALOHA, trying to be fair to this comedy/drama

With this cast, it seemed only fair to give this film a chance.  However critics just killed this film when it came out particularly heaping their ire on the writer/director Cameron Crowe.  Sadly this is a case where the bad reviews are well deserved.

It seems that Cameron Crowe can't seem to do anything right these days.  At one time he was the golden boy with films like Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous.  He's apparently in movie hell with junk like We Bought a Zoo, Elizabethtown and Vanilla Sky.  Although I would have to say I have never really cared for any of his films after Jerry Maguire.

I suppose a plot recap would be in order but suffice it to say the film isn't worth it.  The film shows signs of some serious editing and it's well know that Sony Pictures hated the film.  But honestly picking on this film is like stepping on ants, it's easy to snuff them out.

Cameron Crowe is know to be a devotee of Billy Wilder and even wrote a book about him.  Crowe sure didn't seem to learn the any lesson from Wilder, the chief one being "if you have trouble in your third act you better go back and see what's going wrong in your first act."

105 minutes.