Hungry for Pi? You should be!

Rating: 10/10 (25 November 2012)

The Angular tales are back with another Ang Lee feature. Director Lee is never timid in taking on a wide array of genres when tackling on a movie. And in his latest "Life of Pi" he might have just discovered a new genre for motion pictures because Pi serves such themes as adventure, love, courage, man vs. beast, family, religion, regret, friendship, survival, and a few others all in one just movie. "Life of Pi" is the most beautiful looking picture of the year, and it will have its Pi I mean eye on the Oscar prize of many technical categories including Best cinematography, sound effects, editing, special effects, and art direction. By the way, the 3-D in this picture is used to its apex. The movie features our protagonist Pi Patel first as an adult telling his incredible teen tale to a journalist, and then it rewinds to flashback in the telling of his unforgettable adventure at sea. Pi's real name is Piscine, so you could imagine how much he was bullied at school due to his name. His father named him Piscine because of his love of pools; but come on bro, out of all the pool of names you could have named your son, why that one? To avoid future name harassment, Pi during his teens, decided to shorten out his name to Pi; an incredible scene in the movie shows Pi in a 3.14 craze demonstrating to his classmates how the Pi equation is calculated in order for them to comprehend that he is now a Pi not a Piscine. Pi's parents live in India and own a farm. When economic problems arise, Pi's father decides to move teen Pi and the family from India to Canada. His plan is to sell the farm (literally) in Canada. To do this, he must first take the family and the animals on a freight ship at sea to Canada. And that is when "Life of Pi" transposes itself to a mystical "survival-at-sea" flick. A brutal storm causes a shipwreck which Pi bravely survives. Consequently, he is stranded on a lifeboat with an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. Yea, that happened to me also. Anyways, Director Lee carries the picture into a thrilling state of "young man vs. beast" for survival. And he brilliantly depicts the relationship between Pi and Richard Parker as the forefront on many of the film's messages about the aforementioned themes. Wait, I must take a break. My cat Douglas Simpson is hungry and I must feed him. OK, that's enough. David Magee's endearing screenplay also deserves an Oscar nod for its relative verbose within Lee's direction. And Ang is a shoe-in for a Best Director Oscar nomination, I must say. Another what should be a sure Oscar nomination is Newcomer Suri Sharma's mesmeric performance as the teen Pi. And Surily I can be serious! Veteran Indian actor Irrfan Khan was solid as the adult Pi, but the young Pi Sharma had the more tasty scenes for a thespian showcase. So without a doubt, on a scale from 1 to 4 (4 being excellent), "Life of Pi" is not a 4 but much better than a 3.14. ***** Excellent