Friday, March 22, 2013

Life of Pi Review (read: Rant)



Any of you who actually followed my live-tweeting of the Oscars this year probably knows how I feel about Life of Pi. But seeing as how there is the huge controversy surrounding the Visual Effects people that worked on the film, I thought I would post a review  about how I feel about the film. Yea, I'm not gonna talk about the unionization or whatever is going on. I just want to talk about how much I fucking hate this movie.
I was completely unfamiliar with the book before I saw this movie. I knew that it involved a kid on dinghy with a tiger, but that was about it. I didn't watch a single trailer, because this was back when I decided to just stop watching trailers for most things. So, since there was huge hype around this film, I saw it. What a massive fucking mistake I made.


There was very little that was good about this movie. Let me start with the worst part and get better, I find that usually works pretty well. So, my biggest bone to pick with this film is the script. I really hope that the film script is nothing like the book, because it is horrendous. Every scene involving Irrfan Khan's character was absolutely excruciating. I just wanted to jump through the screen and FUCKING STAB HIM TO DEATH! Who was the fucking genius who thought that it would be a good idea to have a character TELL THE STORY OF WHAT WE ARE ABOUT TO SEE ON SCREEN! HOLY FUCK! Do you not know how movies work? Remove all of those scenes and you start to have a pretty alright film. And it still wouldn't be that good, but I don't blame the script for that part...


All of the scenes in this film suffer from one problem: horrible acting. You know a movie is bad when the best actor in the film is a fucking CGI tiger. Yea, the acting was that bad. The kid who played Pi wasn't completely awful, but he sure as shit wasn't good. And Irrfan Khan was just...wow. The peak of badness. Not only was all of his dialogue fucking boring as shit, he also decided that he couldn't act and wanted to be a fucking board through all his scenes. FUCK THAT!


Now let me give this movie some backhanded comments. The direction and visuals on this film were the only reason that any sane person should go out and see it. Let me start with the direction. Ang Lee has always been great, but this is literally him at his finest. When you have such little scenery and actors to really work with, you would think it might be a hard task to make this movie look great. But Ang Lee (and his cinematographer Claudio Miranda) made every shot (ignoring the boring shots with Irrfan Khan) look phenomenal. You know it must be pretty impressive when a fucking boy on a dinghy looks awesome. That being said: neither of these pieces of shit deserved the Oscars that they won. Seriously, they did a great job, but you have got to be fucking kidding me. You shouldn't award someone for being good, you should award them for being excellent. When you pass up Steven Spielberg and the phenomenal Roger Deakins, you don't deserve to live.


The real crowing achievement of this movie is the visual effects. That is the one Oscar that this film earned. Richard Parker looked so fucking phenomenal, and you know you've done something right when the CGI tiger is the best part of the movie. Bravo to the visual effects team that worked on this film. And all of the crazy effects with the island and the whale...just breathtaking. Oh, and I can't forget to mention the ridiculously amazing shipwreck scene. Hands down, best part of the movie.

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To sum it up: see this movie is you want to see something with spectacular CGI and great cinematography. Other than that, this movie is a huge pass. If this movie had won Best Picture this year, I would have murdered someone. I would have fucking blew a gasket. Thank god it didn't.


Writing: 3/10
Directing: 9/10
Acting: 3/10
Pacing: 3/10
Rewatchability: 1/10

Score: 3.9/10

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