She can see that Benjamin has a lot to learn. Kelly is a great-looking woman (after all, she looks like Scarlett Johansson), but she’s all business, dedicated to the welfare of the animals.

The place was once a private zoo, shut down for reasons involving money and regulations, and Kelly Foster (Johansson) minds the animals with the help of Peter MacCready (Angus MacFadyen), a pipe-puffing Scotsman, and Kelly’s teenage cousin Lily (Elle Fanning), who seems not entirely unaware that she’s in a script that may require her to sooner or later kiss Dylan. He finds an ideal house, which the real estate agent only gradually explains comes with its own menagerie. Dylan is nabbed for shoplifting and Benjamin, a journalist, decides it’s time to leave the big city and raise them in the country. He’s raising their kids, Dylan (Colin Ford), in his mid-teens, and Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones), who is 7. WHERE: Century 14 Downtown, Century Rio 24, Cottonwood, Four Hills, Winrock, Premiere (Rio Rancho), Starlight (Los Lunas)Īt the outset, the movie’s Benjamin Mee (Damon) is still in mourning after the death of his wife. RATED: PG (for language and some thematic elements) (“What do we do to make the Robin Jones character interesting?” “He always has a monkey on his shoulder”). He’s never seen without a monkey on his shoulder, although that’s his only point of interest. We even see Patrick Fugit, immortal as the hero of Crowe’s “Almost Famous,” as a member of the zoo staff. Matt Damon makes a sturdy and likable Benjamin Mee, and Scarlett Johansson, as the head of the zoo’s animal keepers, seems adamantly unaware that she’s in a script that requires her to sooner or later kiss the hero. Not that the film is without charms as a choice for the holiday season. The result is too much formula and not enough human interest. In adapting these facts into the movie “We Bought a Zoo,” all Cameron Crowe has done is move it to Southern California, supply it with a staff of character actors, add two romances and a villain. The Dartmoor Zoological Park in Devon, England, was opened in 1968, closed in 2006 and then was purchased by the Mee family. There really is a Benjamin Mee, and he and his family really did buy a zoo.

Scarlett Johansson and Matt Damon star in “We Bought a Zoo.”

Ben mee zoo