movie review the life of pi

A tiger can crowd a lifeboat

Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that many readers must have assumed was unfilmable, it is a triumph over its difficulties. It is also a moving spiritual achievement, a movie whose title could have been shortened to "life."

The story involves the 227 days that its teenage hero spends drifting across the Pacific in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. They find themselves in the same boat after an amusing and colorful prologue, which in itself could have been enlarged into an exciting family film. Then it expands into a parable of survival, acceptance and adaptation. I imagine even Yann Martel , the novel's French-Canadian author, must be delighted to see how the usual kind of Hollywood manhandling has been sidestepped by Lee's poetic idealism.

The story begins in a small family zoo in Pondichery, India, where the boy christened Piscine is raised. Piscine translates from French to English as "swimming pool," but in an India where many more speak English than French, his playmates of course nickname him "pee." Determined to put an end to this, he adopts the name " Pi ," demonstrating an uncanny ability to write down that mathematical constant that begins with 3.14 and never ends. If Pi is a limitless number, that is the perfect name for a boy who seems to accept no limitations.

The zoo goes broke, and Pi's father puts his family and a few valuable animals on a ship bound for Canada. In a bruising series of falls, a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and the lion tumble into the boat with the boy, and are swept away by high seas. His family is never seen again, and the last we see of the ship is its lights disappearing into the deep — a haunting shot that reminds me of the sinking train in Bill Forsyth's " Housekeeping " (1987).

This is a hazardous situation for the boy ( Suraj Sharma ), because the film steadfastly refuses to sentimentalize the tiger (fancifully named "Richard Parker"). A crucial early scene at the zoo shows that wild animals are indeed wild and indeed animals, and it serves as a caution for children in the audience, who must not make the mistake of thinking this is a Disney tiger.

The heart of the film focuses on the sea journey, during which the human demonstrates that he can think with great ingenuity and the tiger shows that it can learn. I won't spoil for you how those things happen. The possibilities are surprising.

What astonishes me is how much I love the use of 3-D in "Life of Pi." I've never seen the medium better employed, not even in " Avatar ," and although I continue to have doubts about it in general, Lee never uses it for surprises or sensations, but only to deepen the film's sense of places and events.

Let me try to describe one point of view. The camera is placed in the sea, looking up at the lifeboat and beyond it. The surface of the sea is like the enchanted membrane upon which it floats. There is nothing in particular to define it; it is just … there. This is not a shot of a boat floating in the ocean. It is a shot of ocean, boat and sky as one glorious place.

Still trying not to spoil: Pi and the tiger Richard Parker share the same possible places in and near the boat. Although this point is not specifically made, Pi's ability to expand the use of space in the boat and nearby helps reinforce the tiger's respect for him. The tiger is accustomed to believing it can rule all space near him, and the human requires the animal to rethink that assumption.

Most of the footage of the tiger is of course CGI, although I learn that four real tigers are seen in some shots. The young actor Suraj Sharma contributes a remarkable performance, shot largely in sequence as his skin color deepens, his weight falls and deepness and wisdom grow in his eyes.

The writer W.G. Sebold once wrote, "Men and animals regard each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension." This is the case here, but during the course of 227 days, they come to a form of recognition. The tiger, in particular, becomes aware that he sees the boy not merely as victim or prey, or even as master, but as another being.

The movie quietly combines various religious traditions to enfold its story in the wonder of life. How remarkable that these two mammals, and the fish beneath them and birds above them, are all here. And when they come to a floating island populated by countless meerkats, what an incredible sequence Lee creates there.

The island raises another question: Is it real? Is this whole story real? I refuse to ask that question. "Life of Pi" is all real, second by second and minute by minute, and what it finally amounts to is left for every viewer to decide. I have decided it is one of the best films of the year.

Read and make comments here .

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Tabu as Gita
• Suraj Sharma as Pi
• Rafe Spall as Writer
• Gerard Depardieu as Cook

Directed by

• David Magee

Based on the novel by

• Yann Martel

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Life of Pi Reviews

A marvelous piece of visual poetry with insights that require contemplation long after the visual awe has subsided.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 21, 2022

The animation involved in bringing Richard Parker to life is something you just have to see. I was blown away.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 23, 2022

ee's directorial instincts are sharp as ever. He can cultivate a believable relationship between Pi and Richard, relying primarily on subtle body language and, of course, the masterful visual effects.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 28, 2022

In my view, people who find no drama in everyday life and lives, and feel obliged, for example, to ski down Mount Everest to keep themselves occupied and excited, are not to be trusted about important matters.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2021

Why must bitter reality always rear its ugly head in such parables?

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Dec 2, 2020

Suraj Sharma gives a performance that exudes both boyish charm and a soulful desperation.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 14, 2020

Giving Ang Lee access to 3D camera equipment and a modern-day fable like "Life of Pi" is the best idea anyone has had in a long time.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 14, 2020

I have certainly seen dramas about survivors; but none, absolutely none that I have seen compare to the spectacular 'Life of Pi'. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 25, 2020

Among its many virtues, this beautiful fable of a teen boy holding a grown tiger at bay for 277 days at sea makes a strong case for the superiority of live-action drama over animation...

Full Review | Jun 19, 2020

...in the end, we must abandon ourselves to the storytelling. With a gorgeous film like Life of Pi, that's not hard to do.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2020

Although certain narrative themes seem overblown or loaded with fallacious simplicity, film is a visual medium at heart and LIFE OF PI is the work of a visual storyteller at the top of his game.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2020

In a rare alignment of artistic vision and blockbuster ambition, Life of Pi stretches the horizon of cinema's new technology to restore old-fashioned movie magic.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2019

Lee imbues the film with remarkable grace, even when its imagery threatens to overwhelm it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 8, 2019

This is a strong piece of filmmaking from Lee, an exquisite bit of eye candy that examines the power of God and religion in a sharp and confident manner.

Full Review | Apr 11, 2019

A boy, and a tiger, and a vast, endless ocean. Ang Lee makes a film out of material that seems almost unfilmable, and a lot of it is quite wondrous.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 22, 2019

Ultimately, Life of Pi as film is a visual complement to Yann Martel's story as opposed to a fresh telling of its own

Full Review | Feb 28, 2019

Life of Pi is beautifully rendered with some fine performances. Unfortunately, this novel deemed by many to be 'unfilmable' ultimately proves to at least partially earn that distinction.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 21, 2019

Lee has successfully married some of this year's most sumptuous visuals with one of its most compelling and unashamedly spiritual stories.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 6, 2019

The visuals and special effects are imaginatively exquisite.

Full Review | Jan 19, 2019

Any old actor will tell you to never share the stage with children or animals. Certainly, that is the case here, as the film is almost exclusively child and animal -- and wonderful.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 1, 2018

Review: ‘Life of Pi’ is a masterpiece by Ang Lee

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Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” asks that we take a leap of faith along with a boy named Pi Patel and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker as an angry ocean and the ironies of fate set them adrift. Their struggle for survival is as elegant as it is epic with the director creating a grand adventure so cinematically bold, and a spiritual voyage so quietly profound, that if not for the risk to the castaways, you might wish their passage from India would never end. There are always moral crosscurrents in Lee’s most provocative work, but so magical and mystical is this parable, it’s as if the filmmaker has found the philosopher’s stone.

Yann Martel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, on which the film is based, constructed many trials for the 17-year-old Pi on his way to becoming a man. It is a richly drawn interior work, much of it spent inside Pi’s mind or awash in his memories. Lee and screenwriter David Magee have managed to stay true to the source without being constrained by it, as so often happens in adaptations. Indeed, Lee has enhanced the novel’s power, employing 3-D and CGI technology with such originality that there are moments when the ocean seems to float around you. And when a certain tiger roars, you may well jump.

As magnetic as Lee’s boundary-breaking visuals are, that wouldn’t be enough to carry the film if it were not anchored by such an electrifying tale. The core is the 227 days Pi spends in the lifeboat, where the rational and the religious vie for his soul and the tiger for his life. But the film, as the book did before it, wants you to understand the complicated and conflicted species being examined here.

GRAPHIC: Tricks to turning pages into frames

To set up the existential quandaries to come, the film uses a framing device only hinted at in the novel. A writer (Rafe Spall) has tracked down the 40ish Pi (Irrfan Khan) in Montreal because he’s heard the shipwreck story might make a book. Their conversations weave the narrative together, but the literalness of the writer’s presence in this otherwise lyrical film is its weakest link.

Pi obliges the writer, with Khan an excellent choice as narrator, unlocking first the early days in Pondicherry, India, and the family-run zoo where he grew up. As the memories flow, images of the zoo fill the screen. Giraffes tear at leaves, pink flamingos high-step across a pond, hippos play, a sloth clings to a tree. It looks like a paradise, and surely was one for the two Patel brothers, Ravi and Piscine — a name that in grade school would become a taunt until a dramatic demonstration of the irrational number pi on the chalkboard stopped it. And so Pi he became (Ayush Tandon plays the 11-year-old). He is a curious boy equally interested in unraveling the enigma of God and the tiger Richard Parker. His father teaches him the tiger’s true nature in graphic fashion; God comes from the clerics of Hinduism, Catholicism and Islam. Pi is ecumenical in his beliefs, which becomes a thematic undercurrent in the film.

Political shifts blow through Pondicherry like a bad wind and after a bit more back story — including Pi’s first love — the Patels and many of the animals are aboard a Japanese freighter headed for Canada with hopes of a better life. There are boys of varying ages cast in the title role, but the Pi that matters most is 18-year-old newcomer Suraj Sharma, who gives the character an emotional depth that matches the Mariana Trench where Pi’s world is torn asunder.

VIDEO: ‘Life of Pi’ trailer

Fear becomes Pi’s first ally when a storm rips at the ship. The will to survive will kick in later. He’s thrown into one of the lifeboats and in the chaos that follows, some of the zoo’s menagerie join him — a frantic zebra, a fussy orangutan, a frenzied hyena and Richard Parker, who boards despite Pi’s best efforts to keep him at bay. Their face-off, and the ambivalence Pi feels toward the beast — both drawn to him and fearing him — will be another recurring theme.

You might think spending the bulk of a film in a lifeboat would soon lose its intrigue. But when there are wild animals, unpredictable seas and diminishing rations there is no time for things to get boring. The strongest survive — nothing new there — but how it comes down to the final two, and whether they will find a way through their considerable differences, is where the film works its magic. At some point the situation demands that Pi come to terms with Richard Parker and God, and this is where the film is at its lightest and darkest, managing to keep the entertainment quotient on par with the esoteric. A floating island filled with meerkats accomplishes this in particularly fine fashion.

There is always a poetic aesthetic that Lee brings to his best work — the brutal martial arts ballet of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” or the homophobic hatred against the backcountry grandeur of “Brokeback Mountain,” which would win him an Oscar for directing in 2006. In “Life of Pi,” certainly given its technological achievements, the filmmaker has raised the bar. Not since James Cameron’s breathtaking blue “Avatar” in 2009 has 3-D had such impact.

MORE: Ang Lee’s ‘Pi’ film technology

The film is consistently beautiful, but it is during Pi’s months at sea that it turns stunning. Sometimes it is in the simple wonder of a school of flying fish or a breaching whale. At others, it is the sense of an infinite presence in a star-drenched midnight sky or an ethereal underwater world illuminated by phosphorescence. The vision is Lee’s, but credit must go to the battalions required to pull off this remarkable feat, including director of photography Claudio Miranda and production designer David Gropman.

While we witness much on screen, the film rests on what Pi is feeling — his doubts, his fears, his faith. That we feel so keenly what Pi feels is a credit to Sharma in his first, and hopefully not his last time on screen, his eyes as endless as that night sky. The emotional pitch of this journey comes in the stream-of-consciousness conversations he conducts with Richard Parker and with God. For as much as Pi is searching for land, he is searching for something to believe in. In that shipwrecked boy’s struggle for answers, Lee has given us a masterpiece.

MPAA rating: PG for some scary action, emotional thematic content and peril

Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

Playing: In general release

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Plenty of Gods, but Just One Fellow Passenger

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By A.O. Scott

• Nov. 20, 2012

It is spoiling nothing to disclose that Pi Patel, the younger son of an Indian zoo owner, survives a terrible shipwreck during a storm in the Pacific Ocean. That much you know from the very first scenes of “Life of Pi,” Ang Lee’s 3-D film adaptation of the wildly popular, arguably readable novel by Yann Martel . A middle-aged Pi (the reliably engaging Irrfan Khan) tells the tale of his earlier life to a wide-eyed Canadian novelist (Rafe Spall), so we know that he made it through whatever ordeal we are about to witness.

Whether a viewer’s good will can survive until the shipwreck is another matter. The older Pi introduces us to his younger self (played as a boy by Ayush Tandon and as a teenager by Suraj Sharma), whose life is so besotted by wonder that those in the audience who do not share his slack-jawed piety might think that something is wrong with him, or themselves.

Named Piscine Molitor after his uncle’s favorite Parisian swimming pool — he adopts the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet as a nickname to avoid schoolyard teasing — Pi grows up in Pondicherry, a serene and picturesque city in South India. His childhood unfolds in this colorful setting, beautifully filmed by Claudio Miranda, inflected with a hint of exoticism by Mychael Danna’s score and graced with the presence of a handful of excellent Indian actors, notably Adil Hussain and Tabu as Pi’s parents.

Young Pi’s existence — and also that of the gentle, professorial man he will grow into — is dominated by religion. Pi’s story, the Canadian writer is told, “will make you believe in God,” and Pi himself is infused with a godliness that knows no doctrinal limits.

The Hindu deities “were like superheroes to me,” he recalls, and at a tender age he began collecting heroes from other faiths, an all-around holiness fan reluctant to declare a rooting interest in any particular team. He likes them all. After receiving a quick précis of the Gospels from a kindly priest, Pi offers up a prayer that summarizes his amiable, inclusive approach to the notoriously divisive subject of theology: “Thank you, Vishnu , for introducing me to Christ.”

No problem! He will go on to embrace Islam and study kabbalah. Thousands of years of sectarian conflict, it seems, can be resolved with a smile and a hushed, reverent tone of voice.

“If you believe in everything, you will end up not believing in anything at all,” warns Pi’s dad, who is committed to the supremacy of reason and who is, as rationalists often are in the imaginations of the devout, a bit of a grouch about it. But this piece of skeptical paternal wisdom identifies a serious flaw in “Life of Pi,” which embraces religion without quite taking it seriously, and is simultaneously about everything and very little indeed. Instead of awe, it gives us “awww, how sweet.”

Until the Bengal tiger shows up, and thank the divinity of your choice for that. Or, rather, thank Mr. Lee and the gods of digital imagery, who conjure up a beast — named Richard Parker, for mildly amusing reasons — of almost miraculous vividness. His eyes, his fur, the rippling of his muscles and the skeleton beneath his skin, all of it is so perfectly rendered that you will swear that Richard Parker is real.

What is and isn’t real — what stories can be believed and why — turns out to be an important theme of “Life of Pi,” albeit one that is explored with the same glibness that characterizes the film’s pursuit of spiritual questions. But Mr. Lee and his screenwriter, David Magee, have the good sense to put all of that aside for a while and focus on the young man, the tiger and the deep blue sea.

Mr. Sharma is a gangly, likable presence, with an emotional expressiveness that makes him good company, and sufficient humility to not mind being upstaged by a computer-generated kitty. Tales of lonely survival have a durable, almost primal appeal, and the middle section of “Life of Pi” confidently clears a space for itself alongside “Robinson Crusoe” and Robert Zemeckis’s “Cast Away.”

Part of the appeal of these stories is their intense preoccupation with practical matters, and the problems Pi must solve form the dramatic heart of the film. How will he secure food and clean water? How will he stay sane and hopeful? How will he avoid turning into Richard Parker’s dinner?

Behind the Tiger

View Slide Show ›

These questions are answered with equal measures of wit and wonder, and with only occasional moments of god-bothering. Unlike just about every other cartoon animal you can think of, Richard Parker, despite his name, is never anthropomorphized, never pulled out of his essentially predatory nature. The relationship that develops between him and Pi is therefore a complicated one, involving fear and competition as well as (on Pi’s end, at least) compassion and love.

It unfolds in a setting that is one of the great achievements of digital cinema, and a reminder that the eclectic Mr. Lee is, among other things, an exuberant and inventive visual artist. (In this respect it is an apt companion to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” speaking of tigers.) There are images in “Life of Pi” that are so beautiful, so surprising, so right that I hesitate to describe them. Suffice it to say that the simple, elemental facts of sky, sea and animal life are captured with sweetness and sublimity.

The problem, as I have suggested, is that the narrative frame that surrounds these lovely pictures complicates and undermines them. The novelist and the older Pi are eager to impose interpretations on the tale of the boy and the beast, but also committed to keeping those interpretations as vague and general as possible. And also, more disturbingly, to repress the darker implications of the story, as if the presence of cruelty and senseless death might be too much for anyone to handle.

Perhaps they are, but insisting on the benevolence of the universe in the way that “Life of Pi” does can feel more like a result of delusion or deceit than of earnest devotion. The movie invites you to believe in all kinds of marvelous things, but it also may cause you to doubt what you see with your own eyes — or even to wonder if, in the end, you have seen anything at all.

“Life of Pi” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Violence, mostly bloodless, inflicted by and upon digital animals.

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FILM REVIEW: Ang Lee's 3D adaptation of the best-seller is a gorgeous accomplishment.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Sharma keeps his wits about him after he is shipwrecked at sea.

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Technology employed by sensitive hands brings to vivid life a work that would have been inconceivable onscreen until recently in Life of Pi . That great chameleon among contemporary directors, Ang Lee, achieves an admirable sense of wonder in this tall tale about a shipwrecked teenager stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, a yarn that has been adapted from the compelling best-seller with its beguiling preposterousness intact. Like the venerable entertainments of Hollywood’s classical era, this exceptionally beautiful 3D production should prove accessible to all manner of audiences, signaling substantial commercial possibilities domestically and internationally.

Yann Martel’s 2001 novel was a book with a fanciful premise so deftly handled that it won the Man Booker Prize and sold 7 million copies. Part survival story, part youthful fable, it’s man versus nature with a philosophical spin that’s easy to digest even for kids.

It’s not surprising that it took producer Gil Netter a decade to get the film made, as technology would not have permitted it to be realized, at least in anything close to its current form, until the past few years. Shot on location in India as well as in a giant tank in Taiwan (for the open-water effects scenes), Pi is an unusual example of anything-is-possible technology put at the service of a humanistic and intimate story.

The first enchantment is Pondicherry, a former French colony in southern India that looks like paradise on Earth, where the father of young Pi runs a zoo. The nimble and faithful script by David Magee ( Finding Neverland ) packs a good deal of character and cultural background into the first half-hour, neatly relating Pi’s unconflicted adoption of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam at age 12 and portraying the warm family life he enjoys.

But hard times prompt his father to announce a move to Canada, where he will sell all the animals. A full hour is set at sea, beginning with a storm and horrible shipwreck. When the air clears, the only survivors on a 27-foot lifeboat are Pi, an injured zebra, a maniacal hyena, a dour orangutan, a rat and a tiger.

Hunger and the law of the jungle assure that the population onboard is shortly reduced to two. For those incredulous viewers who haven’t read the novel, Pi’s ability to co-exist with the tiger is carefully addressed. Still, 227 days is a very long time to keep fed and maintain your wits on the open sea for both man and beast, and this floating journey is marked by ordeal (this must be the first film to present the spectacle of a seasick tiger) and startling sights, like luminous jellyfish setting the nighttime sea aglow.

Meticulous care is evident in every aspect of the film. The three actors playing Pi at various ages are outstanding. The lion’s (or tiger’s) share of the burden falls on 17-year-old Suraj Sharma, the only human being on view for half the film. Lee looked at 3,000 candidates for the role (deliberately avoiding Bollywood talent) and found an unknown whose emotional facility is quite impressive. Ayush Tandon is captivating as the sponge that is young Pi, but absolutely imperative to the film’s success are the heart, lucidity and gravity Irrfan Khan provides as the grown-up Pi looking back on his experience.

Creating a plausible, ever-changing physical world was the first and overarching technical challenge met by the effects team. The extra step here was rendering a tiger that would be believable in every way, from its violent movements and threatening stares to its desperate moments when, soaked through and starving, it attempts to claw its way back onto the boat. With one passing exception — a long shot of the tiger making its way through a sea of meerkats that’s a bit off — the representation is extraordinarily lifelike.

The leap of faith required for Lee to believe this could all be put up onscreen in a credible way was necessarily considerable. His fingerprints are at once invisible and all over the film in the tact, intelligence, curiosity and confidence that characterizes the undertaking. At all times, the film, shot by Claudio Miranda and with production design by David Gropman, is ravishing to look at, and the 3D work is discreetly power­ful. Mychael Danna composed the emotionally fluent score.

Venue: New York Film Festival Opens: Wednesday, Nov. 21 (Fox) Cast: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Gerard Depardieu, Ayush Tandon Director: Ang Lee No rating, 125 minutes

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For Pi, A Wonderful 'Life' Finds Its Way To Film

Bob Mondello

Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) is lost at sea with a fierce Bengal tiger, Richard Parker. Twentieth Century Fox hide caption

• Director: Ang Lee
• Genre: Adventure
• Running time: 127 minutes

Rated PG for emotional thematic content throughout, and some scary action sequences and peril

With: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Adil Hussain

Watch Clips

'It's Yours'

Credit: Fox 2000 Pictures

'Please Send Help'

When your dad owns a zoo in India, as Pi's dad does, it's perhaps natural to regard animals as your buddies. Cool if you're talking goats and turtles; less cool if the animal you decide you want to pet is a Bengal tiger.

"He's an animal, not a playmate," his terrified father shouts. "Animals have souls," the boy replies gently. "I have seen it in their eyes."

Fast forward a few years, and Pi will get a chance to test that theory when his family closes the zoo and is accompanying the animals on a sea voyage to their new home in Canada. A terrible storm swamps their freighter, and it starts to sink. Thinking of the animals, Pi races below deck to free them and sees zebras swimming past him. He barely manages to escape himself.

As the freighter goes down, he clings to debris, fashioning a sort of raft so that he can survive a truly horrifying night. Then dawn comes, and there appear to be no other survivors. Pi is relieved to spy an empty lifeboat nearby — only to discover it's not as empty as it looked .

Thus begins a tale that, on the page, was widely viewed as part religious allegory, part animal fable, part rip-roaring adventure. Although there's talk of gods in a framing device — because inquisitive Pi qualifies as a devout Hindu, Christian and Muslim — the challenge for director Ang Lee and his human star Suraj Sharma was to bring the adventure part to persuasive life.

And do they ever, finessing survival questions just as they occur to you and personalizing, in intimate ways, both boy and tiger.

"We were both raised in a zoo by the same master," Pi murmurs to his fierce companion. "Now we have been orphaned, left to face our ultimate master together."

Pi takes in the bioluminescent wonders of the sea. Twentieth Century Fox hide caption

Pi takes in the bioluminescent wonders of the sea.

Lee conjures exquisite images — an underwater shot of the freighter going down, a dense school of flying fish glinting in the sun, phosphorescent jellyfish lighting up the night as a majestic whale surfaces inches from the boat. And of course there's that magnificent orange-and-black beast at the film's center.

He's Ang Lee's crouching tiger, hidden digitizers, as it were: During filming, there was often a boy on the boat, and occasionally a tiger on the boat, just not at the same time. But there isn't a single image of them together that you're likely to question while watching the film.

The script I did question; it takes awhile to get going, and it feels strangely flat at the very end. But in between, Lee is very skillfully employing cinema's most advanced digital techniques in the service of an adventure yarn that is gloriously old-fashioned — and often just glorious.

• Cast & crew

User reviews

A glorious film.

• Sleepin_Dragon
• Aug 6, 2021

Very impressed

• Nov 12, 2012

Powerful storytelling and splendid performances presented in a brilliant 3D

• Davor_Blazevic_1959
• Jan 2, 2013

The most imaginative film this year

• JohnDeSando
• Nov 20, 2012

Probably the Most Complete Film of the Year

• damh_frikinlater

Breathtaking cinema

• Leofwine_draca
• May 10, 2014

Great movie, but a great director!

• chaudharyabhijit
• Nov 14, 2012

If you're expecting enlightenment...

• Jan 1, 2013

A visually opulent triumph of film-making!

• Nov 21, 2012

Life of Pi is a visual spectacle, Irrfan Kahn's best

• ClaytonDavis
• Sep 27, 2012

Absolutely Jaw-Dropping

• Zachary_Butler

A Beautiful But Flawed Film

• nolandalla-447-695930
• Nov 27, 2012

Disappointing tall tale, dressed up as pseudo philosophy

• boothkaren20
• Jan 6, 2013

What is your view of God?

• mursel-502-657523
• Nov 24, 2012

Life Of Pi = Best (Art + Story Telling + VFX)

"this is a picture of sheer power and beauty".

• StevePulaski

Fantastic Film

• Nov 16, 2012

Sanitized Version of the Book with Melodramatic Touches

• Jan 8, 2013

"I just told you two stories. Which one do you prefer?"

• TheSupertramp
• Nov 22, 2012
• Dec 14, 2020

One of the Most Beautiful Films You're Going to See

• Michael_Elliott
• Nov 25, 2012

A Mostly well executed, Beautiful Experience

• livoentertainment
• May 1, 2022

Great visuals serve only as a distraction from a overbearingly preachy plot and shallow characters.

• castostarlight
• Jan 28, 2013

beautiful movie

• Nov 19, 2012

What's one more review?!

• planktonrules
• Apr 10, 2013

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