Kevin James stars in yet another inoffensive and mildly-funny slice of lightweight family fare...

Released just in time for the lucrative summer holiday market, Zookeeper sees Kevin James reunited as star, co-writer and producer with several of the writing and production team behind Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The film features a star voiceover cast for the animals including such Hollywood heavyweights as Sylvester Stallone and Nick Nolte.

James plays Griffin Keyes, the titular zookeeper whose ex-girlfriend, Stephanie (Leslie Bibb), has come back into his life after spurning his marriage proposal five years earlier. Griffin is still hung up on the beautiful but vacuous Stephanie and longs to win her back.

Unfortunately, one of the main reasons she left him in the first place was his unglamourous choice of career. Griffin confides in his friend and colleague, Kate (Rosario Dawson), about his love for Stephanie and she offers to help where she can.

Overhearing this, and worried that they might lose their favourite zookeeper, the animals (who, of course, can talk) formulate a plan to get Griffin and Stephanie back together. When this backfires, they reveal to an understandably shocked Griffin that they can talk. The animals then proceed to teach him how to impress the ladies, animal style. However, while this approach may work in the wild, marking your territory with urine proves to be less successful in a smart restaurant.

While this is going on, Griffin strikes up a friendship with Bernie the Gorilla (Nolte) who has been ostracised and put in solitary confinement for allegedly attacking a zookeeper ten years ago. As a result, Bernie is untrusting of humans and aloof towards his fellow animals. As the film goes on, Bernie gradually becomes more trusting and opens up about his history.

Griffin, Kate and the animals' efforts culminate in, it has to be said, predictable results with the requisite 'important moral to be learned'. Zookeeper isn't a challenging film, but then again it does not purport to be one. There are numerous problems, however. The film's central idea of animals being able to talk to humans is not an original concept. Indeed, it has been seen in a host of flicks – some good, some less so. This would be forgivable, were it not that virtually everything else in the film has been done hundreds of times before too. Zookeeper is riddled with clichés and makes no attempt to offer the audience anything it has not seen before.

Rather than using CGI for the animals, Zookeeper features live beasts for most of the zoo's residents. The only exception to this is Bernie, who is animatronic due to restrictions on ownership of endangered species. However, next to the real creatures, Bernie looks like it would be more at home in a Dairy Milk advert than a zoo.

As characters, the animals are very hit and miss – mostly miss, in fact. Stallone and Cher give their voices to a lion and lioness whose old-married-couple bickering is hackneyed in the extreme. Judd Apatow is forgettable as the elephant and Maya Rudolph's giraffe is as annoying as Sandler's capuchin monkey is charmless. A pair of grizzly bears, voiced by Jon Favreau and Faizon Love, are the only really likeable beasts in the film.

One of the most inexplicable scenes can only be described as a five minute-long advert for TGI Friday’s. Griffin takes Bernie, who had previously questioned if “TGI Friday’s is as good as it looks,” there for a surprise birthday treat. The scene adds nothing to the film and has to be one of the most blatant and extended pieces of product placement ever committed to celluloid.

That said, it’s not all bad. James is eminently likeable. If anything, Zookeeper highlights how much of a shame it is that he's not yet found a film that does him justice. Unfortunately, flicks like Zookeeper are never going to take him beyond the comedy level of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. There are also decent performances from Rosario Dawson and Ken Jeong, who plays Venom, the sleazy reptile keeper.

Zookeeper is not a laugh-a-minute film, but there are just about enough laughs to keep you watching. The jokes veer between being utterly puerile and being a little too adult for a PG audience. However, those that land somewhere in between are reasonably funny.

(Ed. Note: Although our reviewer was disappointed with the film, Zookeeper director Frank Coraci recently sat down for a delightful chat with our Editor-in-Chief Luke Connolly, the full transcript of which is available here.)

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