After the surprise success of 2009’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Kevin James gets a second shot at “leading comedian” status via summer 2011’s Zookeeper. Griffin Keyes (James) works as the head keeper at the Franklin Park Zoo. He loves his job even though it costs him a relationship with his girlfriend Stephanie (Leslie Bibb); the materialistic girl just can’t see herself being married to a low-paid zookeeper.

Five years later, Griffin’s brother Dave (Nat Faxon) gets engaged – and his fiancée Robin (Steffania De La Cruz) invites Stephanie to the party. Stephanie shows renewed interest in Griffin, and he’s clearly hung up on her.

Dave pressures Griffin to leave the zoo and work at his car dealership, where he could earn tons more money. Griffin views this bump in pay as the only way to get back with Stephanie, so he strongly considers a change in career.

The zoo’s animals overhear these conversations and react unhappily to the prospective loss of their caretaker. They attempt to make him look like a hero in front of Stephanie but this goes awry. Out of disgust, Joe the Lion (voiced by Sylvester Stallone) accidentally slips and breaks the “animal code” when he shouts at Griffin.

Understandably, this freaks out Griffin, and he soon gets an education from the animals as the critters reveal that they’ve always been able to speak. They attempt to teach him how to win back Stephanie while they also try to keep him as their zookeeper.

While Blart was a low-budget cinematic afterthought that somehow managed to make a sizable $146 million – nearly six times its budget - Zookeeper came burdened with Real Expectations. It marked James’ first attempt at a solo lead role since Blart. In 2011’s The Dilemma and 2010’s Grown Ups, he worked with one or more other above-the-title actors, but Zookeeper offered just James and a bunch of not-as-successful talents.

With a take of $78 million, Zookeeper didn’t bomb, but given its $80 million budget – and prime summer release date - it disappointed. Maybe James does best when his movies come out at a schlubbier time of year like January and not during hot hot hot July.

Or maybe James just needs to make better movies. I looked over his filmography and couldn’t find a single good film in which he’d starred. I think James has real talent, but either he can’t pick quality projects or he just isn’t successful enough to receive “A”-list scripts.

I will say that I think Zookeeper offers a step up over the relentlessly mundane Blart. Not only didn’t that one prompt any laughs from me, but also I never even cracked a smile. Zookeeper failed to produce guffaws, but I chuckled a couple of times and saw mild humor in a few situations.

Actually, virtually all of the film’s relatively amusing sequences come from James’s performance, specifically when he becomes Bad Griffin. To get back with Stephanie, Griffin embraces his meaner, more materialistic self, and James gives us such an over the top take on a cocky, smarmy egotist that he manages to deliver some decent comedy.

Before and after those scenes, however, Zookeeper becomes a lot more forgettable. It comes across as rather disjointed, especially since it doesn’t appear to know what audience it pursues. With its cute talking animals, the film seems to embrace a kiddie crowd, and a lot of its jokes go down a juvenile path.

However, the movie’s story doesn’t make much sense for that audience. What self-respecting nine-year-old will care if Griffin manages to get back with his old girlfriend? Granted, I’m not sure what 44-year-old – self-respecting or not – would care about these flimsy characters and Griffin’s pursuit of the Obviously Really Wrong For Him Stephanie, but at least the plot offers themes/situations that would theoretically interest adults. Kids? Not so much, and I suspect they’d get pretty bored whenever the movie leaves the animals – which it does frequently.

Zookeeper also throws in some character choices that come across as odd for a kiddie audience. Take reptile specialist “Venom”, for instance. As played by Ken Jeong, he seems like a role better suited to a hard-“R” comedy; he’s a perverted weirdo who makes sexual allusions that are strange and out of place in a “PG” movie. Heck, Venom would be a bizarre choice for “PG-13”, but since Zookeeper goes with the family-friendlier rating, the role and Jeong’s presence become even less sensible.

All these comments may make it sound like Zookeeper will work better for adults than for kids, but that’s not the case. It seems to be a case of a film that attempts to be all things to all people: it wants its kids and adults to both enjoy it. Alas, it appears unlikely to satisfy either audience, as the “adult-oriented” elements are too dumb to work for the grown-ups.

The characters tend to be a big problem. From Minute One, it’s abundantly clear that Stephanie is wrong for Griffin, so it’s absolutely impossible for us to hope that Griffin will succeed in his quest to reunite with her. Not only do we know this won’t happen, but we don’t want it to happen. Unfortunately, the movie expects us to invest in Griffin’s efforts, so it loses points.

Of course, the movie also includes the Obvious Eventual Romantic Interest via Griffin’s co-worker Kate (Rosario Dawson). Also from Minute One, we can tell that she’s perfect for Griffin and we know that they’ll end up together. We don’t know how this will develop, but it’s as inevitable as could be.

I suspect my overview makes Zookeeper sound more coherent than it is. While the movie does focus on Griffin’s pursuit of Stephanie, it goes off onto too many tangents to deliver a clear narrative. Much of the time it feels like a bunch of little plot points vaguely linked together. The movie comes across as episodic and not especially logical.

It also ends up as much more complicated than it needs to be. At its heart, all Zookeeper wants to be is a silly movie about a fat guy and talking animals – why gussy it up with the relationship complications? Just make it about some corporation that wants to take over the zoo and Griffin leads the animals to stop them. No, that’s not a great plot, but it’d keep the movie’s focus more firmly on the animals and make more sense for a flick aimed at pre-teens.

I doubt it’d be funnier than the actual Zookeeper, though, as it seems clear there’s not a lot of comedic inspiration behind this effort. It delivers a disjointed, lazy farce without a whole lot of redeeming value.

Zookeeper appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 2.40:1 on this Blu-Ray Disc. Much of the movie looked great, but some inconsistencies came along for the ride.

Sharpness became one of these issues. Although the majority of the flick showed solid clarity and accuracy, occasional slight instances of softness occurred. Still, these remained infrequent. No issues with jaggies or shimmering occurred, and edge haloes were absent. Print flaws also failed to materialize.

Colors demonstrated a stylized palette. Amber dominated, while night shots went with blue. These gave the movie an unnatural look but not in a distracting way, and the tones were well-rendered given the visual choices. Blacks came across as dark and deep, but shadows tended to be a bit too heavy. I suspect that occurred to hide the movie’s ample use of computer graphics; whatever the case, the film tended to make low-light shots appear a little too tough to discern. Nonetheless, enough strengths occurred here to turn this into a “B” transfer.

As for the flick’s DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack, it was good but unexceptional. Aas one might expect, zoo scenes opened up the spectrum the best, but even those didn’t boast a ton of activity. They allowed the movie to feature good general atmosphere and a little occasional excitement, but overall, the soundscape remained pretty low-key.

It sounded good, though. Speech was always concise and distinctive, and music appeared lively and full. Effects were clear and accurate, and the whole package provided nice low-end response. Nothing here dazzled, but the track was a perfectly decent “B”.

Most of the set’s extras come in the form of featurettes. With Bernie the Gorilla, we get a seven-minute, 13-second piece that features director Frank Coraci, animal coordinator Mark Forbes, “Bernie suit” performer Tom Woodruff, Jr., SPFX character designer Alec Gillis and actor Kevin James. We learn about a mix of elements that went into the creation of the film’s big primate. Despite the piece’s brevity, it delivers a lot of good notes, and we see useful shots from the set. It’s a quality program.

Next comes the eight-minute, 31-second The Cast of Zookeeper. It offers notes from Coraci, James, producer Todd Garner, writer Nick Bakay, and actors Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, Ken Jeong, Joe Rogan, Nat Faxon and Donnie Wahlberg. We find a quick overview of cast and characters. Other than some outtakes, this is a pretty forgettable puff piece.

When we examine Creating the Visual Effects, we locate three short clips with a total running time of eight minutes, 47 seconds. It shows effects progressions along with commentary from visual effects supervisor Pete Travers as he tells us how they brought the animal performances to life. Travers covers the issues well in these informative, concise programs.

Behind the Stunts lasts five minutes, 22 seconds and deliver comments from Coraci, James, Rogan, stunt coordinator Jeff Gibson, “Bernie suit” performer Garon Michael, and stuntman Donnie Downy. We get a look at some of the movie’s stunt sequences in this fluffy but occasionally useful featurette.

During the six-minute, 21-second The Furry Co-Stars, we hear from James, Forbes, Jeong, Dawson, Garner, crow trainer Larry Payne. We learn a little more about the use of real animals on the set. This one also tends to be on the superficial side, but it provides enough good facts to merit a look.

Finally, Be the Bear runs one minute, 38 seconds and features a look at ursine work – from the human POV as well. We see a trainer instruct a bear and then watch him do the same with Kevin James. It’s moderately amusing.

Eight Deleted Scenes fill a total of 11 minutes, 43 seconds. Two show more of the Venom character, while most of the rest extend existing sequences. For instance, we see more of Griffin as he attempts to get the animals to break their “code”, and we also check out a conversation between Griffin and a “purse dog”. A couple of these offer mild amusement but nothing great shows up here.

Laughing Is Contagious delivers a five-minute, 56-second piece. This is a standard gag reel, with the usual allotment of goofs and giggles. Given all the animals on the set, things can become a little less predictable, but mostly we see clowning.

The disc opens with ads for The Smurfs, Soul Surfer and Paul Blart: Mall Cop. These also appear under Previews along with clips for Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, Planet 51. No trailer for Zookeeper pops up here.

While Zookeeper delivers more laughs than most Kevin James movies, that’s a bigger indictment of his other films than an endorsement of it. Despite a few mildly amusing moments, the movie rambles too much and fails to provide anything especially engaging. The Blu-ray offers fairly good picture and audio along with an average roster of supplements. This ends up as a decent Blu-ray for an utterly forgettable film.