Director: Francis Lawrence
Writers: Richard
LaGravanese, Sara Gruen (novel)
Starring: Robert Pattinson,
Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz, Paul Schneider, Jim Norton, Hal Holbrook,
Mark Povinelli
It was a little over a year
ago that I saw the trailer for “Water for Elephants” before watching the movie
“True Grit” with my father. He confessed to me that he had loved the book. He
had a look of guilty pleasure on his face. This was coming from a man who has
hardly read a book that didn’t involve Green Beret’s, Marines, or Navy SEALs in
his entire life. Certainly, this intrigued me to see this circus-based romance.
I think this may be a case
of the book being better than the movie, although the movie is solid in what it
is trying to be. It’s a little predictable, but the journey is fairly well
done. The story involves a young man during the depression, who stows away on a
circus train. To save himself from being thrown off in a manner that would
likely leave him severely injured, he offers his services as a veterinarian.
The man who runs the circus
is a tyrant who employs his wife as his star attraction. She catches the eye of
the young man, and the stage for a Shakespearean tragic romance is set. Robert
Pattinson plays the young man in a more challenging romance than his “Twilight”
gig. Christoph Waltz is the mean-spirited circus manager. This role is a little
more standard than his Oscar-winning turn as Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s
“Inglourious Basterds”, but Waltz still pulls off an impressive performance.
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