Zoo Baby

I knew what to expect from Zoo Baby the moment I saw and heard the opening credits.

An animal-obsessed child, Pip, moves from his home in Nairobi to London to live with his aunt Julia, in order that he can attend Grammar School. Unaccustomed to the British niceties he encounters, Pip is more attracted to the Zoo and the Circus in his neighborhood. One day, playing truant from school, he journeys to the Zoo on his own to see a a rare animal that has just been moved there. Pip kidnaps the animal.

This movie was surprisingly short and just as well, because ZOO BABY was quite boring.

Gerard Lohan is sent to live with his aunt Angela Baddeley. He's downhearted because his parents in Africa let him keep all sorts of animals, but customs has seized his pet for quarantine, and a house without a garden in the middle of London.... well..... he enjoys the zoo maid Doreen Keough takes him to, and there's a circus, but when he gets the notion that the zoo's new coatimundi he likes is being mistreated, he takes it home with him.

It's a well-written kid's film, and the location shooting at the Chessington Zoo is nice, but young Lohan is one of those young actors who speak in precise, overly modulated stage English, which sets my teeth on edge. Edwin Astley's woodwind score is deliberately bright and eccentric, just the sort of thing that someone who thinks all children are feeble-minded adults would compose.

I cannot think that this film was made to be shown at children's matinee as it would have been hosted off the screen.The Children's Film Foundation had certain standards which this doesn't live up to.The boy actor is truly awful mind youthe plodding direction does nothing to help.I can just see a film were a selfish child goes around stealing all over the place finding acceptance from parents of children viewers.