Water for Elephants (2011)

-Rated PG-13
-Released: April 22, 2011
-120 Minutes
-Drama
-Starring: Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz
-IMDb (7/10 rating): “A veterinary student abandons his studies after his parents are killed and joins a traveling circus as their vet.”

4/5 Stars

Water for Elephants starts off with an elderly man in the rain walking to the circus at night, he’s hoping to catch the show but when he shows up it’s too late and the show is over and getting ready to move out.  The owner of the show takes him to his trailer to try to call someone to come pick him up, once there the old man starts talking about when he was in the circus and proceeds to get a glass of scotch and start to tell his story.

The movie then fades into a younger version of the old man, Jacob Jankowski, leaving his parents house to head to school to take his final test to become a veterinarian just like his father.  His life is going to be working at his fathers practice and then eventually taking it over when he gets older.  Life has a change of plans for him when his parents die in a wreck and Jacob takes off on foot.  It’s the time of the depression and he has nothing left for him at home…when he stumbles upon a moving train he decides to jump on hoping to get further away from the life he left behind.  That faithful jump changes the course of his life from an almost Cornell graduate of Veterinary Medicine to a circus worker.

Robert Pattinson plays the young Jacob and he does an amazing job! It was strange to see him in a different role than Edward from the Twilight Saga but I think he did an amazing job capturing the personality of Jacob.  Reese Witherspoon is our lovely Marlena and she does play her well.  It was strange seeing Reese in this role because in real life Reese is in her 30’s but she is playing the part of a woman in her early 20’s.  I’m not saying Reese looks OLD by any means, because she doesn’t, it was just strange trying to think of her as younger than Jacobs character.  She does a great job though capturing the love and nurturing for the animals just as Marlena did!  Now to Christopher Waltz who plays Marlena’s husband, he did an amazing job capturing the character of August.  He wasn’t who I had made in my mind while reading the book but wow he does a great job!

Water for Elephants is a magical movie and I really enjoyed it.  You have the aspects of what it was like to be on a circus in the early 1900’s and Rosie, our beloved elephant, has a great part.  This is one of those times I would have loved to be an actor…you get paid tons of money to work with circus animals on a film!  I’m jealous.  LOL.

My final note is, I really enjoyed the movie.  It gave me goose bumps, brought tears to my eyes (both happy and sad), made me laugh and I had a smile on my face for most of the movie.  However, I don’t know if I would have been this effected by the movie if I hadn’t read the book.  But instead of saying anything in comparison to the book stay tuned tomorrow for my comparison review of the book and the movie. 😀