Secret Zoo (Son Jae-gon, 2020) (Patreon)

I was looking for something a little different, and Secret Zoo fit the bill: a broad Korean comedy that adopted a goofy premise and then pretty much played it by the numbers. For a film about a zoo on the brink of closure that [SPOILERS] repopulates its most popular exhibits with the zookeepers in custom-made animal costumes, Secret Zoo is fairly predictable and has little to no interest in broaching the realm of the bugfuck. This is wholesome family entertainment all the way.

Part of why I was curious about it, aside from the fact that its star, Ahn Jae-hong, is a veteran of several Hong Sang-soo films, is its odd Covid-19 era provenance. After making decent box office in Korea in January, before the outbreak, Secret Zoo went dormant, like all other early 2020 releases. But for some reason, it has been one of the few films released in Germany now that theaters are reopening there. There's even a German-language dub. Why this film? Was it cheap? Who knows, but a disproportionate number of Germans are seeing this cute but average film -- just another 2020 anomaly.

The whole thing is elevator-pitch, really. Kang (Ahn) is a junior partner in Seoul's legal mega-firm JH. He's fighting to get ahead, and he gets his chance when he's tapped to take control of a failing asset for one of the firm's major clients (an international developer called Rakwon -- insert Wu-Tang joke here). Dongsan Park Zoo isn't exactly closed yet, but most of its animals have been sold to other zoos, and only a few mid-level fauna remain, along with a "difficult" (i.e., unpredictable and unfit for exhibition) polar bear named Black Nose.

Kang meets the remaining zoo employees, a suitably ragtag bunch that includes the former zoo director Seo (Park Yeong-gyu), an obsequious basketcase who keeps talking about how he "ran the zoo right into the ground," and Han (Kang So-ra), the zoo vet who is the most competent member of the staff, as well as the most personally invested, having grown up around the zoo and developed relationships with the animals, especially Black Nose.

While the "plan" for saving the zoo is intended to be the high-comedy thrust of the film, it's actually more unnerving than anything. We're supposed to understand that Dongsan Park went under due to a combination of mismanagement and corporate speculation, but when we see ordinary visitors attending the zoo, it's truly frightening. Spectators throw rocks and garbage at the animals, yelling at them to move around and be more entertaining. As one of the key "gags" in Secret Zoo, Kang and Seo riff on the old polar bear Coke commercials by having the "polar bear" (Seo in a suit) chug 550mL bottles of Coke for the delight of zoogoers. But this idea seems inspired by the fact that people have been chucking Coke bottles at Black Nose for years. Is it any wonder this animal is neurotic?

So Secret Zoo ends up being a bit self-deconstructive. It's about private capital saving a shitty zoo for public relations reasons, for the benefit of wealthy tourists and resort attendees. And this, after the local population pretty much demonstrates that they don't deserve a zoo in the first place. The comedy that follows the basic pattern -- save the public good and the little people from Big Bad Money -- ends up doing the opposite, with barely any notice. And Black Nose's escape from the zoo, and Korea (to a wildlife preserve in Canada) is Secret Zoo's happy ending.

An interesting film for these times, when we're the ones who are stuck in captivity.