Water For Elephants

Francis Lawrence appears an odd choice of director for Water For Elephants, a family friendly old fashioned weepy. With a back record of decidedly average films on the CV so far I can guess that the producers felt that the director wasn’t all that important an aspect (another nod to the Golden Age, I guess) as their hopes were pinned on the already built in audience of one of the leads of the film, a certain Mr Robert Pattinson. Pattinson plays Jacob Jankoski, a student studying to be a vet, who finds himself homeless following the death of his parents and ends up joining a travelling circus who’s boss, August (Christoph Waltz), rules both man and animal with an iron fist. Despite trying to keep a low profile Jankoski appears on August’s radar, who employs him as the circus vet. However, Jankoski soon starts to make eyes at August’s wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon). As you can guess, trouble ensues. This has the look and feel of a film Hollywood would have made many years ago what with the outlandish sets, animals and hundreds of extras. The catch being these days that, as in this film, lots of the above is now just CGI and it loses that breath taking spectacle. Lawrence’s direction is by the numbers and to be fair to him it doesn’t really need to be anything more to tell this fairly simple story of love and lust. Waltz is half-decent as the villain of the piece (though he now appears to be typecast forever) and is the only one to put much effort in on the acting front. Neither Pattinson or Witherspoon are convincing and there is zero chemistry between them. Now the controversial part. Since the film’s release a video has emerged of the Elephant in the film (Tai) being tortured in order to perform tricks, like we see her perform in the film. I should add that this footage is believed to have come from 2005 and the studio obviously wouldn’t have had any knowledge of such actions back then. However, animal charities allege that some of the trainers of Tai who mis-treated her were actually employed on set during the shoot (though there is no allegation of mis-treatment during the filming). The studio, Twentieth Century Fox, have released a press statement stressing the fact that the mis-treatment occurred many years before they become involved with the elephant. However, it seems to me that, even though they are not culpable in any sense for what happened, aren’t the studio still making money on a film for which they now know that their star elephant in it was only able to perform the tricks shown due to it being tortured?

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict

Hard to ignore the elephant issue, but even then this is probably one for R-Pattz completists only. Rating: 5/10.