Movie Thoughts: Life of Pi (2012)

• Released: 21 November 2012
• Directed by: Ang Lee
• Running time: 2 h 7 min
• Rating 4.5/5

Synopsis

A young man and a Bengal tiger are left out on sea on a tiny lifeboat after a shipwreck and have to figure out a way to survive together.

My Thoughts

A beautifully shot movie with some great CGI. It's fairly faithful as an adaptation of the book, which I can appreciate. I think they only cut out the scene with the French castaway and added a love interest.

Being the animation/animal lover that I am, I am still astonished by how well the CGI holds up. Is it perfect? No, but considering how quickly 3D animation tends to age, it's stil very impressive. It also helped that they switched between using footage of a real tiger and CGI, which made it harder to tell when Richard Parker was CG and when he wasn't. Even the effects on the hyena and the ape, though they're barely in the film, hold up very well (the hyena looks more realistic than last year's Lion King ones). My only complaint regarding the computer animation would be the zebra: the animation on that has aged very, very poorly. I could tell that wasn't a real zebra even without glasses. But all of the rest is near perfection.

Only other thing I'm not a fan of is them using wolf sound effects for the hyena.

It also has some great shots. I liked the spiritual angle, too. The movie, despite taking place mostly on a simple lifeboat, never felt tedious or too long. I'm very impressed and definitely recommend this one.