Directed By: Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)
Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall
Rating: PG for emotional thematic content throughout, and some scary action sequences and peril
Run Time: 2 hour, 7 minutes
Synopsis: When Pi Patel (Sharma) and his family travel by freighter across the Pacific to move their zoo animals to Canada, a large storm sinks their ship, leaving Pi as the only human survivor. Stranded at sea for almost a year and only a dangerous Bengal tiger as his companion, Pi battles with the faith he lost as a child while struggling with the elements to stay alive.
REVIEW
Andrew: Hello readers! Earlier this week Sarah and I caught a matinee
showing of the new film
adaptation of Yann Martel's immensely
popular 2001 novel, Life of Pi,
directed by Academy Award winner Ang Lee. Told through flashbacks, the film is
about the survival of an
Indian teenager named Pi (short for
Piscine, named after a French swimming pool, natch) who gets
stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean after the cargo freighter his
family’s zoo was being transported on sinks, with his only company for 227 days
out on the sea is a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
This was a film whose
trailer we've seen numerous times; it’s one that I don’t think either one of us was necessarily excited about
seeing, though I did want to see it because it was shot in 3D, not
post-converted. Ang Lee has said numerous times that he didn't think “Life of
Pi” was a filmable book until he decided to give it a shot in 3D.
So that’s why I wanted
to see it, but I know you weren’t too particularly jazzed about seeing this
one. Now that we've seen it, what did you think of Life of Pi?
Sarah: I’m still a wondering a little bit what all the fuss was about.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful movie. It’s beautiful. But like Avatar, most
of the movie’s stock seems to ride on the special effects and the 3D. I wasn’t
blown away. I thought that the story was…not weak…I just never read the book,
it never appealed to me, and it still doesn’t appeal to me. It’s not like I
want to rush home and read the book now.
I don’t know. It was
pretty, but that’s about all I can say about how I truly feel about Life
of Pi. Sorry, but it’s true.
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| Life of Pi, based on the novel of the same name, largely takes place on or around a lifeboat adrift in the Pacific where Pi Patel must survive the elements and a tiger named Richard Parker. |
