Visually impressive and nice acting but has some plot problems

Rating: 6/10 (17 March 2013)

I was very hopeful for this movie, and while I was expecting a lot more out of it I won't say that it was a bad movie. It was good. The visuals were breathtaking and obviously a lot of work went into making the animals realistic. However to go along with the visuals there is some solid acting and an interesting premise. However, the movie's final act is where the film stops floating and begins to sink and this final act makes me mad because the movie could've been a lot better.
So the movie starts off with a book author visit our main character (Pi) who is an adult man who wants to tell an interesting story to the author which will make the author believe in God. Then Pi goes on to say that when he grew up he believed in three different religions... this is one of the incredibly stupid moments in the movie. While the idea sounds interesting, it doesn't work because two of the religions (he becomes a Christian and a Muslim) say that worshiping other gods is wrong and he is also a Hindu (who believe in many gods). Now if he said he liked the attributes of each and made up his own belief then that would make sense, but for him to say he is devoted to each is a lie. His father actually says one of the smartest things in the movie: "I would rather my son believe in something that is false than to believe in everything, because believing in everything is the same as believing in nothing" and this is true. However for some reason the father is looked down upon even though he said the most intelligent thing in the film.
Continuing: Pi also tries to befriend a tiger (his father owns a zoo) named Richard Parker. However, his father wants to prove to Pi that animals are dangerous, so he puts a goat outside of the cage and... MAGICALLY THE TIGER PULLS THE GOAT INTO THE CAGE! I laughed out loud because it is never explained how the tiger managed to pull a goat into the cage.
So Pi is on a ship with a bunch of animals which are being sold. Pi goes on deck and notices that the ship is sinking. When he returns he finds a zebra in the hallway he just walked out of a couple of seconds ago. Did the people even think about the zebra got there? All of the doors were closed to the hallway but some how it magically appears in the hallway. Either way Pi gets stuck on a boat with a Zebra and finds an orangutan floating on a raft of bananas. Shockingly enough Pi is stupid enough to NOT GRAB THE RAFT OF BANANAS AND USE THEM FOR FOOD! Soon it is discovered that a hyena is on the boat and was hiding under the boat cover and it kills the other two animals but is then attacked by Richard Parker (who was under the same boat cover).
Most of the movie revolves around how Richard Parker and Pi creating a truce. They encounter storms, rain, beautiful ocean views, and a strange floating island. The floating island part of the movie really bothers me because it is a raft of vegetation with a legion of meerkats (if the ship sank it Japan and by the end of the movie he is saved in Mexico then that means this island was in the pacific but meerkats live in Africa). Apparently the floating island has pools of freshwater (WTF) and has fish that live in the freshwater but the freshwater turns to acid at night and the plants digest the fish (Again if it is floating in the ocean then the only fish it will get are saltwater fish and even if freshwater fish got in then they would all be dead in one night but apparently this happens on a regular basis. Pi also finds a tooth in a flower and realizes that the plants must've eaten someone but if it ate a person then THERE WOULDN'T BE TEETH GROWING OUT OF FLOWERS! That's like eating a chicken and having a beak growing out of your arm!
EITHER WAY, Pi is saved but no one believes his story so he tells another story that involves real people instead of animals and it is much more realistic. However, nobody like his realistic story so everyone goes back to believing the original (non-sense) story. So the question is: how does this make you believe in God? Was it the miracles? Was it the way he was saved multiple times? Nope, it makes you believe in God because he says religion is the same as his two stories, EVERYONE BELIEVES THE FIRST STORY BECAUSE IT IS MORE FUN! His argument for why you should believe in God is because it is more fun.
The movie's ultimate problem is that it is wrong in so many ways. Believing in everything IS believing in nothing but the movie says otherwise. The final reason for why you should believe in God contradicts the entire movie as well. Furthermore, I'm surprised that this movie spent SOOOO much time on animating animals realistically yet it missed some very obvious things. Bananas don't float (so orangutan would've been dead), the tiger can't get to Pi because his claws keep on digging into the boat cover so he gets stuck, maybe the book/movie forgot that tigers have retractable claws? Pi would've been dead. When the zebra, hyena, and orangutan die there are flies on their bodies yet they are in the middle of the ocean, there are no flies. How come in the movie there are no dead bodies of the animals literally from one scene to the next. It is just plain stupid how much this movie misses.