“We Bought a Zoo” is a really inter­esting film from a production stand­point, because it wants to show you something it doesn’t understand well enough to explain.

The teaser poster simply shows a zebra with a bow on it, with the words “FOR CHRISTMAS” written over its head and the title below. But it’s not about Christmas any more than it is about any of the other strains of hu­man warmth it goes chasing after. And the poster people weren’t the only ones who were confused.

Every single actor in this film seems to have been given a different account of what the finished product was sup­posed to be.

A Family Flick?

Matt Damon, playing Benjaman Mee, the newspaper writer who quits his job after the death of his wife and buys a zoo, treats his part as an exami­nation into the meaning of family.

Colin Ford, playing his rebellious teenage son Dylan, is making a movie about the pressures of inconsiderate parenting on a growing spirit.

Maggie Elizabeth Jones (playing Dylan’s sister Rosie) embodies ambi­tious innocence. The three of them represent the faction who thought this would be a drama.

By contrast, Angus Macfadyen, who plays zoo handyman Peter MacCready, thinks it’s a comedy. His nemesis, evil zoo inspector Walter Ferris (played by John Michael Higgins), is straight- up cartoonish. Animal caretaker Kelly Foster (played by Scarlett Johansson) and her cousin Lily Miska (Elle Fan­ning) represent a third faction—ad­venture.

For the duration of the film, which follows the Mees as they attempt to re­habilitate their live-in zoo to operating conditions, the three forces all think the others are on the same page.

Thomas Haden Church, who plays Ben’s brother Duncan, is the wild card; he was apparently told to be something different on each day of filming. He starts off as the part of the wise sage, but then becomes a nag, the straight man for a bit of comedy, and then the wise sage again, except that now he’s feigning wisdom from a completely dif­ferent standpoint.

Since he comes and goes through­out the movie, these shifts are prob­ably supposed to represent a gradual change in personality, but it’s so chop­py it’s actually delightfully schizoid.

“Okay, THC,” I imagine the direc­tor saying, “Today you’re not worldly anymore. Today you’re distrustful and anticipat­ing a root canal or something.”

None of the Above

But which is it: drama, comedy, or adventure?

It’s actually none of these, and it’s the movie’s inability to decide that saves it. It would have been a bad drama (too stiff), a bad comedy (too cheesy), and a bad adventure (because 20 minutes in, you’re already where you’re going). Every actor in this movie put his or her heart and soul into a collection of wildly different performances, and in the end what gets you is that all these people really, really just wanted to make a movie you’d like.

You have to love something here, because after awhile desperation be­comes endearing, both on the screen and behind it. I can hear the rallying call now:

“If it’s not youthful exuberance then it’s going to be sight gags, or drama, or watching people jump out of their skins in primal fear, we just don’t know, but Matt Damon saved his spare cableknit sweaters from ‘Contagion’ and Tom Church is going to act extra awkward today, so let’s just try every conceivable thing and let’s bring it on strong!

“Come on, team! We’re going to sell a movie called ‘We Bought a Zoo’!”