Zoo Story

Zebra in the Kitchen, though it sounds like the tale of an equine in an apron, is actually about a hill-country boy (Jay North, TV's Dennis the Menace) who loves a puma named Sunshine. When Jay's folks move into the city, Jay stows away Sunshine in the back of the family truck. The cat ends up in a cramped zoo, where Jay becomes errand boy just long enough to snitch Keeper Andy Devine's keys and set loose lions, tigers, bears, apes, zebras, snakes, elephants, an ostrich and Sunshine upon a terrified populace.

Well, not too terrified. The ostrich swallows a transistor radio and becomes a feathered walkie-talkie, the elephant slurps up a gentleman's bath, and the zebra turns domestic. On balance, the kid himself might seem the worst behaved, but Zebra isn't that kind of bestiary. Producer-Director Ivan Tors, who made Rhino! and the Flipper series, views all fauna through globs of sentiment. In a rich and foamy climax, Zoo

Doctor Martin Milner subdues the fugitive Sunshine's snarls with a spray-can full of whipped cream, and before long a spacious new zoo has been flung up.

Cutting through the film's whimsy, though, is Tors's awareness that the animal kingdom is a world of enchantment for the very young. His human characters are paper-thin, but his jungle creatures are real and twice as appealing as any in a picture book. But not for sophisticates, whatever their age.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.