Good looking story takes too long

Rating: 7/10 (23 March 2013)

I looked at quite a number of reviews before writing this. Some I agreed with almost entirely. I watched this in 3D at home on a large screen with my wife - no external distractions but the ability to make comments when necessary. I absolutely loved the opening of the film, how Pi got his name, his search for religious meaning and love. The shipwreck was wonderful. Unfortunately, then came the meat of the film. Twenty minutes of the tiger was more than enough. We both were getting bored. I kept wondering why, after so much time with his feet in the water, the kid wasn't eaten by a shark. In fact, I almost wished it just to get the story over with. The whole magic island bit was completely absurd. Of course, that may have been the final put-on of an absurd story. But if so, a good hint that this was a fantasy should have been put forward earlier. As my wife said, the moment the kid walked among the merecats he would have been stripped to the bone. Now, at the end we find that the story may have been made up and we are offered a second story that is much more realistic. A complete waste of time. If asked, my decision would be for the second story the first time I saw it: Hitchcock's Lifeboat. My verdict is that the film should have been 90 minutes long, trimming the ocean and cutting the second story. With that I would have given it a 9. I loved the CGI but even that got tiresome. If you've seen one of the IMAX 3D undersea travelogues you know that CGI can't beat nature. So for the story I give it a 6 but the CGI bumps it up to 7.