Entertainment

Touching ‘Zoo’ is a keeper

Genuinely charming, treacle-free family films are tough to find these days, so I’m happy to heartily recommend “We Bought a Zoo’’ as heartwarming holiday fare that even jaded adults can share with the kids.

Cameron Crowe’s very welcome return to form after the disastrous “Elizabethtown’’ (2005) stars a never-better Matt Damon as Benjamin, a newly widowed reporter who has somehow survived waves of layoffs at the troubled LA Times.

Benjamin’s boss and his accountant brother (Thomas Hayden Church) are flummoxed when he decides to quit his job and reopen the long-closed Rossmoor Animal Park that he’s purchased with an inheritance.

Benjamin’s 7-year-old daughter, Rosie (adorable Maggie Elizabeth Jones), is delighted because the deal includes 200 endangered animals on site, as well as a largely eccentric staff.

Teenage son Dylan (Colin Ford), who has already been expelled from school for theft, is less thrilled at having to leave his city friends behind for the countryside. He continues acting out in ways small and large, including grotesque drawings that alarm his new teachers.

Benjamin is determined to reopen the zoo by July 4, but that can’t happen unless it passes an inspection by a finicky federal official (John Michael Higgins, who shares the comic heavy lifting with Church).

Heading the zoo’s staff is tough, no-nonsense zookeeper Kelly (Scarlett Johansson, not normally a favorite of mine, in by far her best performance to date).

Kelly is highly skeptical about the newcomer — at least until Benjamin digs ever deeper into his inheritance to make improvements, and begins bonding with some of the animals.

Also working at the zoo are Kelly’s teen cousin Lily (Elle Fanning), who tries hard to win Dylan over; a hard-drinking, ill-tempered mechanical genius (Angus Macfadyen); and a friendly guy with an ever-present capuchin monkey on his shoulder played winningly by Patrick Fugit, the teenage star of Crowe’s “Almost Famous.’’

Crowe’s new film doesn’t reach for the glorious heights of that classic, but it won’t disappoint his fans, either.

He’s collaborated with Aline Brosh McKenna (“The Devil Wears Prada’’) on an intelligent script adapted from an autobiographical book by Benjamin Mee (it was set in England).

There are plenty of animals — a 650-pound grizzly and an ailing old tiger are especially prominent in the plot — to delight the kids. For their parents, there’s a mix-tape selection of songs by Tom Petty, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.

Damon, who also did a great job playing a widower in the wildly different “Contagion’’ this year, is a commanding presence as he struggles to help his son deal with grief over his mother’s death. Damon brings an especially sensitive touch to scenes where Benjamin recalls his late wife (Stephanie Szostak) with love and affection, even as his relationship with Kelly begins to deepen.

One of our great humanist directors, Crowe deals with difficult emotional issues, but always with a light, sure and honest hand. He makes the two hours of “We Bought a Zoo’’ — normally a bit long for a family movie — positively fly by.