Kevin James started off the year with a poor box office showing for The Dilemma and ended the summer with only a slightly better U.S. profit for Zookeeper. Luckily for James, Zookeeper did fine worldwide. I’ll give the credit to the cast, which features not only James but also the voices of Adam Sandler, Maya Rudolph, Sylvester Stallone, Don Rickles, and even Cher.

Hoping to endear itself to its DVD purchasing audience, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is offering a variety of options with its home release of Zookeeper. The film will come in a Blu-Ray Combo Pack, Blu-Ray, or DVD on October 11. Whether you choose the combo pack or DVD, the film will come with a ton of featurettes and little else. All in all, 9 featurettes will be present on the disc, encompassing such topics as the cast, the stunts, Bernie the gorilla, and riding an ostrich. With a cast featuring so many comedians, it seems surprising to me there are no deleted scenes, but I’ll go ahead and chalk that up to the voice acting being done separately from the filming.

Excellent bonus features or no, Zookeeper was not any worse than many of the other live action kids films featuring talking gorillas. See: George of the Jungle, a movie I disdained so much as I child I turned around at the drive-in and watched Shall We Dance without sound. It’s just that James has been playing the same crappy roles to try to win the same mainstream audience in every movie he makes. It would be nice to see him try something different, maybe complicated instead of endearing or confident instead of bumbling. Let’s hope he’s still signed on for Alejandro Monteverde’s World War II indie; it could go a long way to show us a little bit of range.