Feb2013_MOVIE REVIEW Life of Pi

By Gemma Schuhmann

Life of Pi follows the amazing adventure of Pi Patel’s younger life.  Having sold the zoo, Pi’s family are relocating the animals to Canada via boat when a strong storm hits causing it to sink.  Once the ocean has become quiet again Pi finds himself stranded in a lifeboat with a zebra, orang-outang, a hyena and a Bengal tiger.  Then the fight for survival begins. 

If you think this story is just about a boy stranded in the middle of the ocean, you’d be wrong.  It’s all about his life up until that point.  Explaining how he was named after a French swimming pool, to being able to believe in three religions at once, to learning life’s essential early lessons and falling in love.  Then once all of that has been explained, he become stranded over the Marianas Trench and the story you have been waiting for begins.  Thankfully the story before hand is told in a very quick and interesting way that you forget Pi is meant to be stuck with a tiger in a life boat.  

The CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) in this film is simply amazing.  Using a mix of real life and CGI effects allows the film to flow freely without disturbing the story.  It’s hard to pick the difference between the real tiger and the CGI one.  The ocean itself is perfectly done.  By using a larger tank than most films have used in the past, allows the ocean to have more depth.  The CGI is stitched naturally to the actual water making it almost impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.  However there are a few mistakes that slip through.  At one point the tiger stands on a piece of fabric and it stays perfectly still but when Pi stands on it, it sags with the weight. Within saying that it hardly takes away from the film mainly because the rest of the CGI is brilliant and stunning allowing you to drift away in a world where the ocean and sky never end.  

The most mindboggling thing about this film is when an adult Pi tells his story to a Canadian writer.  First he tells the amazing story with the tiger before telling a much more gruesome story highlighting the darker side of human nature. Then he asks the simple question, ‘Which story do you prefer?’   And never explains which story is true.

Life of Pi will play with all of your emotions in a wonderful magical way.  A great movie everyone can enjoy.

4 ½ /5