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By Collin, on April 26th, 2011

Water for Elephants – Movie Review

In the first fifteen minutes of the movie my criticisms and worries about the Water for Elephants adaptation were quickly answered. The movie was able to be quite good, while the novel was quite ordinary; if not mediocre.  I wrote the following many months ago:

Water for Elephants suffered from its poor narrative structure. Much like The Notebook, a story which had a very effective love story in the past, the book jumps back and forth through time – from past to future. Now, if you’re going for nostalgia, that MIGHT be okay, but doing the jump so many times is poor writing. Most of all, it is annoying.

I got many E-mails saying I was a fool and couldn’t recognize great writing if my life depended on it. Regardless of the irony of stating WFE is great writing, I can now state that I was correct or at least the makers of the film would agree with me.

The director or writer immediately realized that jumping back and forth from past to present was counter productive in establishing an emotional investment in the characters, as well as served no purpose in the novel.

I’m not saying this to bash the book, but to celebrate the movie, which did what needed to be done.

Water for Elephants has a fantastic premise, an ivy-league boy, Jacob, loses his parents so he runs off with the circus. However, the story never really has a decent plot or decent ending.

Jacob’s family dies in a car crash so he leaves veterinary school before graduating and randomly jumps on a Benzini Brothers train. The circus show is struggling and needs someone like Jacob. Cool. He meets the owner August and quickly falls in love with August’s wife Marlena.

The scenes between Marlena and Jacob trying not to kiss will seem familiar and the movie quickly becomes boring. However, Christopher Waltz playing August instantly becomes the saving grace of the movie.  August’s madness, balanced with his sensitive disposition to his wife, then further matched with Watlz’s performance, made the movie quite good.

The ending was overly sentimental. I didn’t quite get what the point was. Moreover, the scene where they first sleep together is an insult to true love that was apparent in the novel and now the movie. A weak writer considers such scenes a marker where they can scream, “Boom! Their in love” and lazily lean back in their chairs. Love does not equal sex. Something that more talented writers of movies, music, poems, and novels, have proven.

My conclusion is the movie is good, but like the book, instantly forgettable. Its saving grace is a masterful performance by Waltz, whose previous work in Inglorious Bastards was some of the best of that decade.

-Collin

By Collin, on December 16th, 2010

Water for Elephants trailer….can an okay book be a great movie? We shall see…

Water for Elephants, if you’ve never heard of it, is a book that swept the American population and was an obvious choice for a film adapation. The producers have recently released a pretty cool trailer check it out here or hop over to Apple and check out a fucking pimp HD version there too.

Looks pretty neat. Rob-the-vamp has a chance to pull away from being typecast as a so-so actor where he did a competent job of playing a shallow, uninteresting, teen vampire. Because I don’t want to describe the book myself here is the plot as Apple sees it:

Veterinary school student Jacob meets and falls in love with Marlena, a star performer in a circus of a bygone era. They discover beauty amidst the world of the Big Top, and come together through their compassion for a special elephant. Against all odds — including the wrath of Marlena’s charismatic but dangerous husband, August — Jacob and Marlena find lifelong love.

Water for Elephants, the book, suffered from its poor narrative structure. Much like The Notebook, a story which had a very effective love story in the past, the book jumps back and forth through time – from past to future. Now, if you’re going for nostalgia, that MIGHT be okay, but doing the jump so many times is poor writing. Most of all, it is annoying.

I hope the screenwriters will realize that a “future story” is, indeed, important…if there is a point to the structure. There was little point in Water for Elephants.

It looks like they’re keeping the modern day Jacob at least a little bit. But if I was them, I would cut everything else out. Much like Titantic did. Loving forever and growing old and all that stuff is a plot device some men and most women love.

Done effectively they can be powerful tools of nostalgia and the passage of time. I’m crossing my fingers the story is done well, I fear though that the director of Constantine and I am Legend might not hit the mark.

But Chris Watlz as August…pretty fucking sweet.

-Collin