"I'm not running away, I'm coming home."

Film: Water for Elephants
Year: 2011
Director: Francis Lawrence
Written by: Richard LaGravenese
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz, Paul Schneider, Jim Norton, Hal Holbrook, Mark Povinelli, Richard Brake.
Running time: 120 min.

To be honest, the movie world has been a little unfair towards Robert Pattinson. Okay, so his big claim to fame is being the object of many teenage girls (and, you know, those Twi-mums) desire by playing an 108 year old grumpy virgin vampire in the most annoying series of movies and books ever to see the light of day (or not, since they're all about vampires). And, let's be fair, these teenage girls and their mums only like him for one thing: his apparent good looks, not his acting skills. So we've all just written him off, thinking that every movie we see him appear in will be just as terrible as the angsty vampire ones. He was quite good in some of the little indie flicks he did before he appeared on 'I Love Edward' t-shirts hidden beneath sweaters. He wasn't so good in Remember Me (that ending still pisses me off a whole 15 months after I saw the damn thing). But along comes Water for Elephants, an adaption of Sara Gruen's best seller that is very Hollywood and comes when R-Pattz is still kinda in vogue, and it's not all that bad. Well, judging by the way we treat old Robert Pattinson, it could have been a lot worse.

R-Pattz is part of another love triangle again, just this time he isn't in high school and pining after K-Stew (who we all know cannot act). The object of his affection is Marlena Rosenbluth (Reese Witherspoon), a beautiful circus performer who is married to the Benzini Brothers circus owner, August (Christoph Waltz). But their love affair comes a lot later in the film. Pattinson plays Jacob, a veterinary student who abandons his studies after his parents are killed. He decides to leave home, and never look back, which is when he climbs aboard a circus train. At first, he isn't welcome, but because of his veterinary knowledge, August thinks that he might be helpful around the circus. After the star attraction horse is put down, August replaces it with an elephant, which Jacob is put in charge of. To be honest, it's not really a love triangle in this movie. It's more a love square, if you add the elephant. Because the elephant rocks!

Of course, thanks to it's hopelessly over-done love triangle premise, Water for Elephants isn't a surprising film, nor is it an amazing one that everyone should run out to see. But, as I've probably said before, I'm a sucker for anything set in the 1930s, so it was a given that I'd like Water for Elephants as much as I did. While I just plain enjoyed it, there were a lot of things that the movie could have improved on. The first: it could have been more romantic. Now, I don't just mean that the script could have had a little more romance in it. I mean that the cinematography could have been a little more romantic. Like, Sofia Coppola should have made this film, because it would have been more magical (or, um, slow...). However, considering Francis Lawrence's career is made up of such action-thrillers as I Am Legend and Constantine and a whole wad of music videos, he didn't do such a bad job. He captures the mood of the 1930s quite well - perhaps glossing over how bad the Depression really was - and does make quite a spectacle over the few circus sequences the film has.

Then comes the chemistry between the three leads. Each character is very interesting and very detailed, which I really liked. However, there were many times when I thought that Reese Witherspoon just wasn't right with either of the two men. And, I know it's bad, but I just felt like Christoph Waltz deserved a higher-calibre of actors to surround him (which Carnage has all sorted out for him), because despite the efforts by both Witherspoon and Pattinson, his sheer presence just shot them down a few levels. Now, I could be saying this because I love Waltz and everything he does, but his work was absolutely brilliant here. He toys with his villainous role with just a simple look, and while his character is not quite Hans Landa, he sure is better than Chudnofsky guy he was given in The Green Hornet. However, enough about Waltz. Witherspoon and Pattinson still do good work in each of their roles, but as a team, they never do feel like a couple. This lets down the vital spark needed in this film, but in the meantime it is fascinating to watch Witherspoon's seemingly trapped circus performer and Pattinson's broken and broke young student.

While there was plenty that went wrong with this film, I did really enjoy it. The circus atmosphere was fun and intriguing, along with the many interesting characters that made up the circus life. There were a few moments of really high tension and the film never really lost my attention. Bookended by Hal Holbrook playing an older Jacob reminiscing about his days with the circus provides a bittersweet tone, which is probably bound to get a few tears from the weaker audience members. I think that Water for Elephants still exists in the world of 'what could have been', but I really liked what it was, and it definitely shouldn't be completely written off. Because, after all, most fans of Twilight probably don't have the mental capacity to handle Robert Pattinson in a film as good as this.

What I got: