What’s in the Zoo?

动物园里有什么？

China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 94 mins.

Director: An Xiaoman 安小满 [Bao Bei’er 包贝尔].

Rating: 4/10.

Comedy centred on an ailing zoo in which the staff dress up as big-name animals lacks a strong screenplay.

STORY

Happy city 欢喜市, somewhere in China, the present day. Shi Tu (Bao Bei’er), meek assistant to Yangming Group deputy general manager Wu Guanghui (Jia Bing), is sacked for finally speaking out and asking to be project manager on the company’s latest deal – demolishing the city’s ailing 219 Zoo and building a resort there. The owner of the zoo is Shi Tu’s paternal uncle, Gao (Pan Binlong). Teaming up with Liu Hao (Song Xiaofeng), a friend who’s also jobless, Shi Tu quickly buys the zoo for RMB800,000, intending to sell it on to Yangming Group for RMB1.2 million – which he knows is the official sales price that includes a kickback to Wu Guanghui. Wu Guanghui and his slippery new assistant Xiaodong (Tang Ren) come to the zoo for a meeting, at which Shi Tu gets Wu Guanghui drunk by forcing him to drink some of the Gao’s homemade wine. But eventually Wu Guanghui pulls out of the deal, leaving Shi Tu and Liu Hao with a zoo of their own. Gao won’t take the zoo back as he’s already spent the money on a house in the southern resort city of Sanya, Hainan island. Shi Tu then discovers from the zoo’s three staff – Lin Xiaorong (Liang Songqing), Yao Shan (Wang Yueting) and Chubby (Xiao’ao’ao) – that the zoo’s total animal population is only 5 goats, 2 peacocks, 6 monkeys, 15 birds, 10 rabbits, some chicken, ducks and geese, plus 2 tortoises and 1 depressed bear called Lele. Moreover, he and Liu Hao are each in debt for RMB400,000. To relaunch the zoo, Shi Tu has the idea of dressing the staff up in animal costumes he’s hired from a defunct film studio’s warehouse. Lin Xiaorong refuses to join in, but the others all do the necessary homework on how to move as animals. At the zoo’s grand re-opening on 15 Oct, Lin Xiaorong joins in at the last moment, playing a tiger, while the others dress up as a panda, gorilla, sea lion and kangaroo. The idea is a big success with a coachload of schoolchildren, who believe the animals are real. Gradually it’s a hit with adults too. Meanwhile, Wu Guanghui is ordered by his chairman to buy the zoo within a week. He offers Shi Tu RMB2 million in cash but is turned down. Wu Guanghui tells his assistant Xiaodong that he’ll give him RMB100,000 if he can somehow ruin the zoo’s business. At the same time, an inspector from the Happy City Giant Panda Preservation Research Centre turns up wanting to know where the zoo got its panda from, as the animal is not registered. And then Liu Xiaorong’s vet boyfriend, Zhang Xiao (Hong Liangcheng), causes more problems.

REVIEW

After his remake of the iconic South Korean hit Sunny 써니 (2011) – as Sunny Sisters 阳光姐妹淘 (2021) – baby-faced Mainland comic and occasional director Bao Bei’er 包贝尔 goes back to the same national well with What’s in the Zoo? 动物园里有什么？, a comedy in which an ailing zoo’s staff dress up as big-name animals to boost business. Unlike Sunny Sisters, which was virtually a scene-for-scene (and sometimes shot-for-shot) remake, Zoo is much more loosely based on its South Korean original, Secret Zoo 해치지않아 (literally, “Don’t Hurt Me”, see poster, left). Based on a webtoon, directed by Son Jae-gon 손재곤 | 孙在坤, and starring An Jae-hong 안재홍 | 安宰弘 and Gang So-ra 강소라 | 姜素拉, it was a middling success on local release in Jan 2020. Bao’s remake, starring himself, took only a polite RMB109 million at the start of this year, slightly more than Sunny Sisters (RMB95 million) but less than half of his directing debut, Fat Buddies 胖子行动队 (2018, RMB261 million). The fact that Bao – one of the Mainland’s busiest film-makers – has used a pseudonym for the directing credit suggests he may have had doubts about the finished product, which was shot almost three years ago.

The best part of the film is the first 20 minutes, with drily comic character actor Jia Bing 贾冰 (the train conductor in Lost in Russia 囧妈, 2020, the father in Serendipity Love 我的遗憾和你有关, 2022, the truculent chef in I Like You More 倍儿喜欢你, 2023) in his element as Wu Guanghui, the pompous boss of Bao’s character, the meek Shi Tu. After daring to speak out about the company’s plan to buy and demolish an old zoo to make way for a resort, Shi Tu is sacked – but then gets his own back by quickly buying the zoo himself (as his uncle is the owner) and then trying to sell it back to his boss’ company. In the best sequence in the whole film, Wu Guanghui is forced to come to meet Shi Tu at the zoo and eat humble pie before being forced to drink some highly alcoholic homemade wine. Jia handles the whole sequence impeccably, and the film is never the same again.

Once Shi Tu finds himself having to run the zoo, and hits on the wheeze of having the staff dress up as big-name animals, the film becomes a one-joke outing, with the only tension being whether the staff will be caught out or not. Despite small subplots like a putative romance between Shi Tu and one of the staff (nicely played by Liang Songqing 梁颂晴, who had a small role in Sunny Sisters and acted alongside Bao in online romantic comedy Northeastern Bro 东北恋歌, 2021), the script by Zhang Peng 张鹏 and Song Chengwei 宋成魏 – both of whom wrote Sunny Sisters, Northeastern Bro and Bao’s latest directorial outing, Super Villain 大“反”派 (2024) – lacks a strong throughline, and only makes it to the 90-minute mark by the skin of its teeth. The second half veers considerably from the South Korean original, with an ending that’s especially phoney. It’s also the first Mainland film in memory to credit a “script doctor” 剧本医生 – in this case the unknown Cheng Hao 程昊.

Various name cameos, by the likes of hatchet-faced Wang Qianyuan 王千源 (as a policeman) and Wei Xiang 魏翔 (as a warehouse keeper), look more like attempts to hide the paucity of the main plot. Technical credits on the film, which was shot in summer 2021 at Anshan Zoo, Liaoning province, northeast China, are all up to scratch without being especially distinctive. There is no English title on either the film itself or any of its posters. As well as the one used here (a literal translation of the Chinese), it’s also referred to in some sources as Follow Bear to Adventure (sic).

CREDITS

Presented by Wuxi Xianshi Wenhua Media (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Shanghai CMC Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Huamei Pictures (CN), Jiangsu Tai Pictures (CN), Haining Hippo Film (CN), Jiangsu Qingbai Film (CN). Produced by Haining Hippo Film (CN).

Script: Zhang Peng, Song Chengwei. Script doctoring: Cheng Hao. Photography: Zhang Wenbao. Editing: Chen Zhiwei. Music direction: Bodee Borjigin. Art direction: Nan Nan. Costumes: Ge Yuhua. Styling: Liu Jun. Sound: Feng Jun. Action: Wang Zhenming. Special effects: Xue Song. Visual effects: Chu Xiaoyang (Multiple Vision).

Cast: Bao Bei’er (Shi Tu), Liang Songqing (Lin Xiaorong), Pan Binlong (Gao, Shi Tu’s paternal uncle), Jia Bing (Wu Guanghui), Song Xiaofeng (Liu Hao), Wang Yueting (Yao Shan), Hong Liangcheng (Zhang Xiao, vet), Xiao’ao’ao (Xiaopang/Chubby), Tang Ren (Xiaodong), Ximen Piaopiao (Xiaoli), Zhao Siqi (female presenter), Chang Yuan (Tan Yongfan), Wang Qianyuan (policeman), Wei Xiang (warehouse keeper), Xu Zhisheng (Old Liu/Six).

Release: China, 12 Jan 2024.