Simpleminded and Ambiguously Religious Propaganda

Rating: 4/10 (23 December 2012)

The dialogue throughout Life of Pi essentially hits you over the head with its purpose from the start: I'm going to make you believe in God. The story does nothing of the sort, and its shallow and irrational protagonist was fairly annoying.
Life of Pi reinforces a pattern set by other western movies supposedly about Indians, promoting a hokey 'spiritualism' with patronizingly simpleminded characters and bright colors.
Pi's conversion to essentially all the major religions in India shows from the beginning that this movie is going to advocate a shallow and ambiguous spiritualism, and ask you to follow a painfully irrational character's actions. Pi is highly emotional and overacted throughout. Perhaps if there was a God to save Pi and help him survive, He wouldn't have caused the shipwreck and death of his entire family in the first place. But it quickly became clear that this was going to be thoughtless entertainment designed to reinforce the beliefs of believers. Bright colors, vivid CGI, and hokey music replaced a substantive plot and message. Instead we are unsubtly told to embrace blind faith, and look at pretty colors while we're at it.