Gets off to a strong start, but the wheels seem to fall off slightly in the second half

Rating: 5/10 (1 September 2015)

I'd put off watching Life Of Pi for quite some time as I was concerned that the premise of a man being stranded on a boat with a tiger may be a rather flimsy plot to base a two hour film on. However, as this had Ang Lee's name against it and had won a whole host of Oscars I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. Sadly, my instincts were correct (at least partly so)...
Life Of Pi starts well and tells a nice story of a young boy living in India. From his early days where he gets teased by his schoolmates for his unfortunate first name, to his struggles with religion to his eventual departure to Canada with his family. It's a nice introduction to Pi and his character and seemed to be building up to something very special indeed (albeit it is a tad preachy and heavy-handed at times). However, Life Of Pi seems to lose its way in the second half (after their boat sinks).
What follows next is around an hour of Pi first of all doing everything in his power to stay clear of Richard Parker (his tiger) to then reverting to his survival book to try to get the upper hand to then attempting to bond with the tiger. The problem for me is that a lot of it just didn't come across as convincing and the ease with which Pi achieves all of these objectives seemed to come far too easily. There are also times when it comes repetitive and annoying (the first scene on the boat with the hyena, zebra and orang-utan went on for an eternity and ended up boring me to tears). The bonding that starts to exist between man and tiger essentially acts as a framework for the second half of the film and as mentioned I just didn't find any of it convincing and for this reason I didn't find this aspect of the story all that compelling.
Despite the fact that I had some issues with the story, Life Of Pi is at least a beautiful film to look at; the visual effects were absolutely phenomenal (the CGI animals look so real and convincing that it's possible to actually feel scared for Pi on the boat). The special effects are also equally impressive. The problem with Life Of Pi is that I felt at times that Lee & Co were letting the special effects get in the way of the story (the scene where all the fish are flying past Richard Parker and Pi was impressive to look at, but also served no purpose) and is something that can only be described as 'pointless showboating'.
Life Of Pi is a well-meaning film and despite some of its problems it is quite a nice story. It's heart is always in the right place and some of the scenes between Richard Parker and Pi were amusing and heart-felt. However, too much of the second half was repetitive and the bond that developed between Richard Parker and Pi wasn't entirely convincing (which was one of the reasons that I didn't care much for the turn of events at the end). It's not a bad film, but it is slightly disappointing especially from a director of Ang Lee's calibre.