Hey everyone, I’m your friendly neighborhood theater stalker, TheCinemaChick. I’m going to tackle a genre I am not a fan of. That’s right, I went and saw a romance movie. To make things even better, it had Robert Pattionson of Edward Cullen fame. It also has Reese Witherspoon as the female lead. You’re probably wondering, “CinemaChick, you have gone on record as saying you don’t like chick flicks, why did you see this?”
The answer: I couldn’t think of anything else to see. Nothing else appealed and I’ve already see most of the new releases. I’m also holding out hope for May, when the summer movie season starts.
The film is begins with an old man at a circus, who begins to have a conversation with the person who owns it. In a very smooth transition, the old man’s voice mixes with Pattinson’s and fades into the memory. I liked how it was done since most movies would just go to the scene and clip the man’s voice out. It was like he was speaking directly to the audience, allowing them to get lost in his story. From there we jump into Jacob’s tale of how he was going to school, about to take his final exam and loses his parents.
I did have a problem with that. This introduction to young Jacob seemed very quick and slightly jerky, which is sad. There’s no transition, just “I’m Jacob”, “I’m a veterinary student”, “I’m at my final”, “My parents are dead”. In five minutes or so, you’ve gotten his life story and are thrown into the main plot. Jacob loses his house, along with everything he has so he decides to leave. Following train tacks seems to be his best choice so he does. When a train comes by, he decides to jump on, only to be confronted by some men. They agree to not hurl him from the train (which I assume is not only painful, but lethal) and in the morning, he learns all about manual labor.
Jacob works as a laborer for maybe one day before he admits that he’s a veterinarian. Well, he’s not one yet, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. He works with the animals, which begins him closer to Marlena (Witherspoon). It’s not an immediate attraction, which I liked. Their first major interaction is where he shoots and kills a horse to end its suffering. If that’s what they’d bonded over, this movie would have never been released. Not only is it wrong, I’m pretty sure its illegal. Since their main horse is dead, August (the owner of the circus and Marlena’s husband) manages to buy an elephant. I’m not sure where he found the money to do this because they are in the depression and money is tight.
Rosie the elephant becomes the new main attraction at the circus, but they are having trouble training her. August’s frustration becomes more apparent, along with his alcohol problem. He becomes more aggressive, much more violent. There is even a scene where he takes a bull hook, a stick with a hook on the end used in elephant training, and savagely beats Rosie. I hated August from this point on, but still cheered for Rosie. That night, Jacob discovers the trick to training their elephant. Who knew elephants understood Polish?
And here you have the bulk of the film: circus, Jacob and Rosie, August beating on Marlena and a lot of discord. It’s the basic plot.
However, Marlena and Jacob do decide to run away, jumping off the train and going to a local hotel. There is a fairly steamy sex scene which is followed by August and his men beating Jacob and taking Marlena back. The young man goes back to the circus, bent on saving her. He almost leaves without her, but something goes terribly wrong. A few other disgruntled workers release all the animals, creating havoc. During this time, August attacks his wife, choking her with the bull hook. Rosie seems to know that the woman cared about her because she pulls a spike from the ground and slashes August’s throat, killing him. Jacob and Marlena leave, the circus is shut down and we return to the present time to see the old man finish his story.
What does TheCinemaChick think?
Despite my dislike of romantic chick flicks, I did enjoy this one. It did follow a pretty stereotypical plot: they meet, they fall in love, conflict comes up, they split apart but end up happy together. Yet it was not the tpyica love story. She was married and she did have the inner struggle of staying with her abusive husband or running off with the young man.
And now for my favorite part, what I didn’t like.
Surprisingly, there isn’t much I didn’t like. The pace got on my nerves because some of the movie rushed by while other parts of it seemed to drag by. Most of the time, it was almost stagnant because there are a lot of scenes with the characters just talking. Also, when the movie is finished, there are some fictional black and white home movies shown. It seemed out of place and a bit forced. Yes, we all need to know that they lived happily ever after, but I think finishing the story with old Jacob would be satisfactory.
I did enjoy the movie overall. Reese Witherspoon does really well in this type of role, the romantic female lead. Robert Pattinson surprised me. I’m familiar with him only as Edward Cullen and I personally do not care for that series. In this movie, he shows emotions well and captures the spirit of his character. Pattinson has talent.
I do want to add this one little warning. If you have younger children, say 13 or below, who want to see this because it has Robert Pattinson, I wouldn’t take them. While it is suitable for most audiences, there is a lot of drinking, smoking, some gambling, mild sexual content, lots of spousal abuse and graphic animal cruelty. I’m not sure a younger audience could handle all of this. Older teenagers might be able to watch the brutality without flinching, but make a good call on this one.
If I had to give this a rating out of five stars, five being the best, I’d say it’s about three and a half. It could be better. From what I’ve been told, the movie is a fairly faithful adaptation of the book. I would like to read the book now.
What’s next on my ever growing list of films to see? I have no idea. I’m not sure what I’ll see next, though Fast Five is going to be on that list.
Well, I’m TheCinemaChick and on behalf of my crew, I bid you all a pleasant theater experience.
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