Mr. Movie: Films about zoos

The biggest natural habitat zoo in the world is right here in my county! So of course Mr. Movie should go on a safari to round up movies about zoos. So he did. With, I’m afraid, very mixed results. 

Let’s begin by saying there are around 50 movies that fit this category. Over 40 of those aren’t very good. On with the show!

We Bought A Zoo (2017) is just so good-natured and fun that you have to like it. It is, strangely, based on a memoir by a guy who actually did buy a zoo. Matt Damon plays a widowed father (Benjamin Mee) of teenagers, and the whole family is despondent without their wife and mother. Looking for a new residence, they find the perfect house and decide to buy it, even though they also have to buy the zoo that goes with the property. The zoo needs major repairs and money to make them. Stay tuned for a very happy ending!

The next two films fall under the “apologizing for zoos” category. Harambe (2023) is a documentary that’s hard to take. A little boy falls into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. The gorilla never harms the child but seems to most to be taking care of him. The kid is rescued without injury. The gorilla, Harambe, is shot dead. The films opens a who can of worms about wild animals kept in enclosures. An Apology To Elephants (2013) is another documentary. This one details the mistreatment of our largest land animals. I don’t think our zoo’s elephants would fit here at all; they seem to have pretty good lives.

Zoo (2017) also features an elephant. This one lives in the Belfast zoo and is terrorized by bombing all around the zoo. Several teenagers decide to rescue the elephant (Buster) and keep it in a back yard. Yep, really happened! How do you keep an elephant hidden? Well, it ain’t easy!

The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017) is also based on a true story. During Word War II, the keeper of the Warsaw Zoo and his wife use the zoo to hide Jews from the Nazis. The Nazis systematically slaughter all the animals, but the keepers use the empty cages and habitats to hide escaping Jews. The Zabrinskas rescued more than 300 Jews, and after Hitler’s surrender they rebuilt the Warsaw Zoo.

This falls in the “not as good as the book” category. Zoo (2015-17) is a TV streamer based on James Patterson’s book of the same name. The book is one of his best, a page-turning thriller. The TV series is just OK. So, what if all the animals in the world, in zoos and wild, suddenly turned into people killers?

Only We Bought A Zoo and the 2017 Zoo are OK for kids. Most of these are available somewhere. Click around!