My wife and I went to see We Bought a Zoo after suffering through War Horse, in the desperate hope that “ole reliable” Cameron Crowe would come through with something that was at least watchable. Well, it was more than watchable, it was very enjoyable, and it gave me an opportunity to marvel at how Cameron Crowe makes Spielberg look like a complete hack. If Stephen Spielberg had made We Bought a Zoo, he would have killed it dead, a thousand times over, with sickening schmaltz (both animal and human) poured on everything like molasses, actor’s performances spinning out of control, boring, heavy-handed, endlessly drawn-out camera shots, vomitous attempts at humor, and the inevitable bad score by John Williams. But in the hands of the vastly more talented Crowe, this little film sings beautifully.

One thing you have to say about Cameron Crowe: the guy knows how to make a movie, and I don’t say this lightly. Whatever you think of his films (I can’t think of one I actually disliked, and I consider Elizebethtown a modern masterpiece) there is a quality of craftsmanship there that cannot be denied. All his talents are on display in We Bought a Zoo. His ability to make GREAT use of a good soundtrack is probably as good as any director I’ve ever seen, and he always gets wonderful performances out of all his actors. He kind of redefined Scarlett Johansson for me – she actually managed to break out of that spaced-out teenager role she’s been playing her whole life, and turned in a very winning, adult performance as the zoo keeper. Matt Damon is his usual wonderful, charismatic self, but Crowe deserves some credit for turning him into a middle-aged dad so convincingly. And the zoo staff all achieve distinct identities without any one of them distracting from the main story and characters – not an easy thing to pull off. The only one he had trouble with (and that’s an understatement) was Thomas Haden Church – I don’t know what happened there, as his performance was a like a ridiculous parody of his usual schtick. He is so bad that he even drags Damon down in their scenes together. But in the end, T.H. Church is not featured enough to do any lasting damage to the film.

But what really struck me about this Crowe / Spielberg comparison was the manifest difference in their camera work. Crowe has this marvelous ability to make even the simplest shots absolutely thrilling – it has to do with the angle of the shot, the motion in the shot, the smallest details of the performance, its placement in a sequence of shots, and the emotional tenor of the soundtrack at the moment of the shot, all of which are obviously carefully orchestrated. One example (perhaps not the best) that is popping into my head right now: toward the end of the film, when the father wakes up and sees the sun shining after weeks of rain, and he runs to tell his son, as he moves quickly into the hall and the camera pans with him but then stops on the wall calendar revealing July 7, opening day for the zoo. It seems like such a small thing, done a million times, but that’s my point: it’s been done a million times BADLY. When Crowe does it here, it is for some reason thrilling, more thrilling than it has any right to be, frankly. I’m not really sure exactly how he does it. The guy is just masterful.

Consider also the way the animals are dealt with in this film. Spielberg would have rubbed our noses in cheese-ball animal crap until we wanted to take a flame-thrower to the whole damn zoo. But Crowe somehow manages to keep the animals in the background, while simultaneously having them indirectly define much of the plot and shooting them memorably enough so that their brief segments have the quality of a first-rate animal documentary. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a “multi-animal movie” of this sort where the treatment of the animals was so perfectly gauged and regulated by the director. The scene with Damon and the Grizzly was incredible – has horror and humor ever been mixed so well?

I’m not saying We Bought a Zoo is a great film. But it is a high quality film that is very enjoyable, and among the crappy, disappointing 2011 holiday blockbuster movies, it stands tall as the best of the bunch by far, indeed the only one I’ve seen that is actually worth watching. Highly recommended!