Review of Water for Elephants (2011) by Michael H — 26 Feb 2012

This flick begins in present day with an old man telling the story of when he once was in the circus. This movie starring Robert Pattison as Jacob and Reese Witherspoon as Marlena is about being in the life of the circus, the Benzini Brothers Circus. Jacob lost his family in a car accident while finishing his schooling at Cornell as a vet, but did not finish his final exam. He sees the circus and decides to join because he lost his parents and feels like he has nothing else to lose. The main attraction was a couple of horses, one in which had a leg problem and Jacob coulden't see him sufffereing anymore and decides to put it down. The circus owner, August, played by Christoph Waltz, was not happy about this. He invests in an elephant named Rosie that will be his new star attraction. August ends up abusing the elephant, once again, Jacob does not like this. Jacob and Marleana end up working closly together with Rosie and end up falling in love. August finds out and threatens to throw Jacob off the train. When Marleana finds this out they run away together to a hotel where later, August's men come and beat up Jacob and drag Marleana back to the circus. Jacob returns to Marleana and all the circus folk are fed up with August's cruelty to the animals and unlock all the cages to free the animals one night. Back to present time the old man explains he went back to finish his final test to get his degree and he takes Rosie and some horses and gets a job with the Ringling Brothers. He marries Marleana and they have 5 childeren.

If you look romantic movies this is a must see, myself, not big on the romance thing but all in all it was a good movie. I'll give it a 70%.