Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2012

A recently widowed big-city journalist (Matt Damon—guy’s got some range) wishing to raise his two kids away from the evil influences of the city finds the ideal country home, which by the way happens to be attached to a small, shuttered zoo. He naively decides it would be a good thing, family-wise, to renovate and reopen the place. It doesn’t hurt that Scarlett Johansson is the head volunteer zookeeper, though any implied romantic attraction is tastefully left for later. All this really did happen, but in Devon, England rather than Southern California, and I think the romances and a few of the characters are made up. Like the villainous, absurdly strict animal-control officer, created I suspect to provide a series of obstacles requiring family bonding to overcome. Not quite on a par with director Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything, Jerry Maguire or Almost Famous (but better than Elizabethtown), this is a wholesome, intelligent and humorous family film with more emotional impact and less treacle than the genre usually offers. True, there’s a general feeling of bland inevitability about the whole thing, but the characters are real and the sentiment earnest. It’ll make you smile.