Life of Pi is a beautiful journey but takes a while to reach the beauty

Rating: 6/10 (25 November 2012)

"Life of Pi is a movie with some stunning images but it fails to reach the spiritual entente it is trying to tell the audience"
Based on the Yann Martel novel of the same name Life of Pi tells the story of two characters who have to learn to get along in order to live. Adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) tells the story of his younger self (Suraj Sharma) when his family sold their zoo in India causing them to move. During the boar journey in sinks leaving Pi alone losing his family. He does not end up alone because a couple of animals join him and most promptly is a tiger called Richard Parker. The two start off conflicting but go through a horrible ordeal that brings the two closer together as they must work close in order to live and return to some sort of home.
Ang Lee is probably the most versatile director working today because he can direct a film about Karate fighters, Gay Cowboys and Hulk. This new film is mainly set in the ocean after spending some time in India introducing us to Pi and how he ended up where he is. Since most of the film is set on a boat and life raft not much dialogue is spoken except for a voice-over from Pi as he explains how he survives and deals with this viscous animal. Lee has made this simple boring story more interesting by providing some thrilling images as the characters go through there adventure. An example of this is the use of bright luminous colours which can either be seen as too distracting or fitting to the story and some of the images shown to me worked while others were to jarring and took away some of the enjoyment. The way this tiger was filmed is very sharp CGI because i was not thinking about whether the tiger was real or not and that shows the talent Lee has to make reality and fantasy blend into one great visual.
First time actor Suraj Sharma plays the main character Pi and this is his first screen performance and acting overall. He brings life to Pi but his performance seems to forced at times and I blame that on his lack of experience acting in general. He can be great at times but for most of the film I was not into his acting. Irrfan Khan plays the older Pi is few scenes as he sets up this story he went through as a young boy. He is just OK because he is not really emotive compared to Suraj and for most of his film is used as a link back to the journey story as he tells it to the writer who will be writing this story Pi went through.
The film's story is the main problem because it is mostly placed in the middle of the ocean and taking the risk gives you the disadvantage of sometimes not presenting the best story you can give all the time. The bright colours and fascinating scenes Lee filmed kept my interest throughout but overall the film fails mostly because of the lack of talents it's main actor has as he acts opposite this mostly CGI tiger.
MOVIE GRADE: C+ (Irrfan Khan)