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Created Nov 24, 2012 09:00PM PST • Edited Apr 22, 2016 04:27PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Portraying religious faith amidst tragic hardship is a lot of weight for a mainstream movie to carry. Fortunately Life of Pi features visual wonders and frequent grace notes to lighten the load, resulting in an exhausting if moving cinematic experience.

   The movie is taken from the celebrated 2001 novel of the same name, “a head-scratching combination of dense religious allegory, zoological lore and enthralling adventure tale, written with warmth and grace.”¹ Celebrated director Ang Lee makes the best of it, in no small measure by using his considerable cinematic gifts and breakthrough CGI to create a key character.

   The fanciful story follows an Indian lad from charmed early years through his teenage experience as the sole survivor of a shipwreck, as related in flashback by his adult self. Well, sole survivor other than a Bengal tiger. Yep, boy and tiger bob across the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat. It’s not a comfortable trip.

   In fact, it’s a forced march, albeit an entertaining one because of the interspecies conflict. Pi learns valuable lessons along the way about faith and self. A storyteller’s kicker of an ending makes the entire enterprise more meaningful, though one can be forgiven for being rung out as much as elevated by that point.

   Life of PI is worthy of its great acclaim, yet is hardly the cineplex crowd pleaser suggested by the trailers. Go in well fortified and behold the wonders.

   ¹ Brian Johnson’s profile of Pi author Yann Martel

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Suraj Sharma plays the teen Pi Patel during his extended castaway ordeal, giving him an appealing pluckiness that travels well. Irrfan Khan plays Pi as an adult, soft-spoken in an Eastern meditative way. Ayush Tandon & Gautam Belur play Pi as a young boy. The three kids are newcomers, while Khan is an accomplished actor who can play tough – Slumdog Millionaire – as well as soft.

   Sharma’s main costar is the CGI creation known as Richard Parker, an incredibly realistic Bengal tiger. While we normally don’t consider animals or inanimate creations as actors, Richard Parker assuredly is. Often fearsome, ultimately emaciated and beaten down, he represents a terrific life force and does so in tremendously visceral form. So what if he’s a high tech apparition.

   Other notables in the small cast:

   • Adil Hussain as Pi’s Father.
   • Tabu as Pi’s Mother. A major star in India, she also starred in The Namesake with Irrfan Khan.
   • Rafe Spall as a Western writer who interviews the adult Pi.
   • Gérard Depardieu as a brutish cook aboard a seagoing freighter. The great Depardieu is always a treat to see, even if only in a cameo.
   • Shravanthi Sainath as Anandi, Pi’s lovely teenage girlfriend.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Ang Lee’s film celebrates the natural world in ways wondrous and manifold. It opens with affecting closeups of zoo animals, several of whom wind up in the lifeboat that is the film’s crucible. It achieves its most spectacular effects in a wondrously luminous ocean full of sea creatures that elevate out of the water, some in schools, others in massively singular fashion.

    Then there is the Bengal tiger at the center of it all. We see ourselves when we look in a wild animal’s eyes, the film opines. Magnificent, selfish, elegant – the tiger is us, a point the film makes profoundly.

    Notwithstanding these encomiums, this long film takes quite some time to really get rolling, ends up being a bit too episodic, and includes a fantasy sequence that doesn’t really work.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Here! Here! The manifold visual wonderments include:

    • A lifelike Bengal tiger up close and personal in extended scenes in and around a lifeboat. No it’s not real, not that you can tell.
    • A school of flying fish swarm over the lifeboat, as Lee’s camera shows them below the water and in close-up above the water. Oh yeah, he also gives us a silvery tuna swimming with them at a high rate of speed. Wondrous.
    • A giant whale breaches by the lifeboat, phosphorescent against the night sky. Jaw dropping.
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

    The movie deals with the loss of family and beloved animals, often taken violently. Beware.

    At a more gut level, the 3D is well worth it, yet much of the movie takes place on a heaving ocean. Those prone to motion sickness will be queasy, guaranteed.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Fierce 2.1

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.7

    One could make an argument that the movie’s reality is strictly natural, after the fact. However it clearly tells a story suffused with surrealism, which is how it is rated here.

22. Circumstantial Supernatural 3.1

23. Biological Supernatural 4.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0