Romancing the trunk

Water For
Elephants
DIRECTED BY: Francis Lawrence
STARRING: Robert
Pattinson, Reese
Witherspoon,
Christoph Waltz
CERT: 12A

Ah, the circus. Sure you have to love it. Or not, if you’re allergic to clowns. Or if you’re a particularly sensitive animal lover perhaps one of the many who’ve been quick to condemn this film for its depiction of the rough life endured by creatures in show business, going so far as to suggest that anyone who buys a ticket to see Water For Elephants is supporting animal cruelty.
Personally, I’m more concerned that anyone who buys a ticket to see this movie is helping to promote the career of Robert Pattinson and is thereby supporting cruelty to innocent audiences.
Pattinson has been the major selling point for the film, whose marketing gurus correctly assumed that swooning fans of the pale, mumbling one from Twilight would gladly cheer on his reincarnation as a human, all the better if he still gets to have a forbidden love affair.
Fans of Sara Gruen’s novel will point out that this big screen thing is a pale imitation of her book – a story that had a lot more going for it than cheesy romance – but nobody in Hollywood is paid to worry about these things, certainly not when Robert Pattinson is out there waiting to stare broodingly at a woman and mumble silly things about eternal devotion.
Pattinson is Jacob (that high pitched squealing you hear is the sound of Stephanie Meyer disciples giggling themselves to death), a veterinary student whose final exams are interrupted by bad family news.
The tragedy leaves him in limbo and penniless. Looking for work, he happens across Benzini’s traveling circus, a ragged troupe hauling its way across 1930s America, offering a bit of glitzy distraction from the Depression.
Jacob jumps on board, gets a job as vet to the circus animals and promptly decides that the show’s main attraction, Marlena (Witherspoon) is the woman for him.
Which is a tad unfortunate, since she happens to be married to the owner and ringmaster August (Waltz), who might be the most charming man in the world if he wasn’t also dangerously psychotic. Chief representative of the poor old animal kingdom is Rosie, the performing elephant.
You don’t need to be familiar with every star-crossed romance to know where this is going and writer Richard LaGravenese gives plenty of helpful signposts just in case. He starts early, too, with Jacob as an old man (the excellent Hal Holbrook) recalling the year that changed his life. Another film comes immediately to mind and does so more than once – something about a large ship and two lovers and a pesky iceberg.
Water For Elephants is not half the film it could have been if someone had the guts to get stuck into the really murky stuff instead of merely paying it lip service before moving swiftly along with the gloss and the moody close-ups.
Having said that, director Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) does know how to put on a show and, on a surface level at least, the film is entertaining to watch. It also has one great thing to its credit and that is Christoph Waltz. He came to our attention a few years back with his Oscar-winning performance as the sadistic Nazi, Col Hans Landa, the best thing about Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. He’s every bit as compelling here as the mercurial ringmaster and nobody else really matters when he’s on screen.
It might not be fair to compare Robert Pattinson to his illustrious co-star, but you can’t exactly escape the glaring difference in class. If the boy is to move on from teeny vampire world, he will have to broaden his range, perhaps move past the ability to glare moodily into the middle distance.
Reese Witherspoon is no slouch as an actress and she does a decent job here but somehow doesn’t seem the right girl for the role. Or maybe it’s that she doesn’t seem the right actress to be getting it on with Pattinson. Generally that requires someone with a very high boredom threshold, so maybe Reese was simply far away in her mind, happy in a nicer place.
If you see this, I’m sure you’ll understand. But let us end this with a positive word for Mr Pattinson. In Water For Elephants, he at least looks healthy, with a fine colour about him.
That’s something, right?