Review: Water for Elephants

With Remember Me, Robert Pattinson didn't have too much luck with his first break from the Twilight franchise. So is second time the charm for this young actor?

Well, that is kind of a tough question to answer. Robert Pattinson cannot play a large range of characters, as he is limited by his lack of talent. In Water for Elephants he plays Jacob, a 1930s Cornell U student studying to be a veterinarian; however, doesn't graduate after the death of his parents leaves him with no home and no money. Jacob becomes depressed as he must walk away from everything he has known in order to rebuild his life.

This type of character is, in ways, similar to that of Edward Cullen, the role that made Mr. Pattinson so famous with preteenage girls all over the world. In that respect, he does an exceptable job for the first twenty minutes of the introduction. However, it is when Jacob stows away aboard a circus train and meets the love of his life, along with her psychopathic husband, that Pattinson becomes upstaged by much greater talent than his own.

Academy Award Winner Reese Witherspoon plays Marlena, the circus' star attraction and wife of the circus' owner. The romance scenes between Pattinson and Witherspoon feel lopsided, aslmost as if an Oscar-winning actress is rehersing her lines with a stand-in, who can only murmur his lines, because her opposite got sick and couldn't show up.

Things only get worse for Pattinson after yet another Academy Award Winner rears his face. Christoph Waltz plays August, the circus' corrupt owner who suspects Jacob and his wife of having an affair. Waltz is one of the greatest villain actors of our day and he doesn't hold anything back for this film. His performance quickly becomes the film's main attraction and made me feel as if though my time was well spent.

Outside of the two Oscar winners, however, the rest of the supporting cast does not give a very performance and some of the lines felt dry and lacked any type of originality.

By the end of the film, I felt like this movie barely reached its goal of being a moving, romantic drama. Had it not been for the two  talented supporting actors, this film would have been completely boring. Maybe you should just rent it.

P.S.
My favorite ending in a film since Jurassic Park.