Overrated Adventure Based on "Max e os Felinos"

Rating: 6/10 (2 March 2013)

In Canada, a writer (Rafe Spall) visits the Indian storyteller Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) and asks him to tell a story.
Pi tells the story of his life since he was a kid in Pondicherry, India and the origin of his nickname. One day, his father that owns a zoo tells that his business is not good and he had decided to move to Canada and sell part of the animals in the United States of America. They travel in a Japanese cargo ship with the animals and out of the blue, there is a storm followed by a shipwrecking.
Pi survives in a lifeboat with a zebra, a orangutan, a hyena and a male Bengal tiger that he called Richard Parker. They are adrift in the Pacific Ocean and when the tiger is hunger, he eats the other animals. Soon Pi learns that he might find a way to feed and domesticate the tiger to survive.
"Life of Pi" is an overrated adventure with stunning CGI. I knew that the novel of Yann Martel is a plagiarization of the "Max e os Felinos" ("Max and the Cats") by the Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar (Note: see the interview with subtitles in this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIQitu5oYWw) .
But the storyline is a rip-off of "Hell in the Pacific" and "Enemy Mine", with two enemies trapped in the same space, entwined with "Robinson Crusoe" and "Cast Away" and magnificent visual effects. The impressive marketing justifies the hype surrounding "Life of Pi". When Pi tells the true story of the wreckage, the magic is gone. My vote is six.
Title (Brazil): "As Aventuras de Pi" ("The Adventures of Pi")