Review of Water for Elephants (2011) by Johann_Cat — 06 May 2011

This movie has a wonderfully photographed period look in its costumes and in its images of circuses on the edges of 1931 American towns, with pennants fluttering in strong winds atop tents. Such images made we want to run away and join a circus unrelated to this movie, which is melodramatic and emotionally manipulative in unclever, obvious ways.

Roger Ebert pointed me to this movie by praising what it could do without crass special effects. But it still has the bludgeoning moralism of many action movies, a tyrannical villain (played with panache by Christoph Waltz) and a two-dimensionally "good" antagonist (Robert Pattinson, who looks great, but is capable of 1.

8 facial expressions as an actor) who is, over and over again, placed in situations in which he can't do anything to right the wrongs (often controlled by Waltz's character). "Oh, wrench your hands in frustration, and await catharsis" these scenes instruct us.

The director has annoyingly confused melodramatic tension with actual drama--evidently ordering these players to be cardboard-like and passive (except Waltz, and maybe the elephant, who steals the movie) in order to ratchet up frustration and expectation ("oh, when will evil be recompensed?!," we are supposed to feel, chronically).

Implicitly, the movie's soundtrack, which is one long, monotonous instruction to "feel the impending doom within this ambiguously sweet spectacle" is really the star of the movie, when it could have been Reese Witherspoon, or somebody who could act better than Pattison, who looks, without benefit, like he's in an ad for Polo cologne in much of the film.