Cameron Crowe reportedly was hesitant to make another film after the failure of 2005's Elizabethtown. Mainstream audiences will probably appreciate his earnest and manipulative fictionalization of Benjamin Mee's memoir, but if I had to guess it may be a while before we see another picture from Crowe, who nonetheless still shows a knack for assembling a stellar soundtrack. The script he co-wrote with Aline Brosh McKenna is closer to her adaptation of I Don't Know How She Does It than to his Oscar-nominated Jerry Maguire. Matt Damon plays Mee, a journalist who decides that he and his daughter (a precocious Maggie Elizabeth Jones) and sullen teenage son (Colin Ford) need a new start after the death of his wife, so he spends his life savings on a house in the country. More specifically, it's a zoo, complete with a kooky staff and a fetching zookeeper (Scarlett Johansson). Minus the corn, it's almost good.
