Ang Lee is an incredible director. I had no doubt in my mind that he was going to do wonders with the movie adaptation of Life Of Pi. I found the book to be incredibly dull and my expectations for Lee to give the movie some new life were about half right. Yes...this is a visually stunning and brilliantly acted (with the exception of one person who I will discuss later) but the film often lacks energy and more often than not is too boring to be recommended.
The film follows Adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) who is telling the story of his life to a writer (Rafe Spall-the one exception.) This story follows his parent's death and him ending up all along in the middle of the ocean with a tiger in a boat. It ends up, however that said tiger saved his life. Now-onto Spall. I understand that the role of the writer in this film is to listen and it's not exactly the most in-depth role. However-does Spall have to be so bland that it gets to the point where his character might as well not have been on screen? Tobey Maguire was originally cast for the role but was later replaced by Spall. Andrew Garfield was also considered. Either of these talented young actors would have been better than the one that they chose. As well-the fact that the story centers around Adult Pi and him does not help to justify how bad he is. Rather, it worsens the fact.
The film is a visual feast in every way possible. The 3D is amazing and the film is beautiful to look at. However, it is all too poky for much of its two hour running time and it runs out of steam long before the end credits roll. The story starts to get extremely repetitive and I myself started to get tired of Pi at any age. There are too many scenes in which the story could have progressed significantly but instead decides to do nothing with what it had. As well, the back and forth between Adult Pi telling the story and the story itself was tiresome and made the film more boring than it should have been.
Ang Lee is a brilliant director and once again proves that here. I am not recommending the film because the story is not interesting enough and quickly becomes tedious. Lee, however shows just how much he can do when given a boring narrative and an exceptionally bad performance. He may not have saved it completely but Lee does make Life Of Pi something worth seeking out on DVD.
(2 and 1/2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated PG for emotional thematic content throughout, and some scary action sequences and peril)
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