Pun Salad

Life of Pi won four Oscars (including Best Director), and was nominated for seven more (including Best Picture). The IMDB raters have (as I type) pegged it as #190 on the list of the Top 250 Movies Of All Time. I don't know about that, but it's pretty good.

It's the story of a young Indian kid, Pi Patel. His family runs a failing zoo in India, and they decide to pack up and move to Canada, taking the zoo beasts with them. They find themselves on a doomed ship, and pretty darn quickly Pi is drifting alone in a lifeboat with a few zoo animals. Most notably, a full-grown Bengal tiger that they've named "Richard Parker".

Or at least that's the story Pi tells. But it's a very good story, filled with danger and amazement. The moviemakers did an incredibly good job putting the story on screen. Even jaded me is amazed to learn that 86% of the Richard Parker shots are CGI, with no actual tiger content.

I read the best-selling novel back in 2004. Although my memory is kind of dim, I think the movie is rather faithful. And that's important, especially for the plot twist at the end. Spoiler alert coming: both movie and book offer a very different alternative look at Pi's travels. So, in its own way, Life of Pi is as bleak as Killing Them Softly. A gutsy choice to make for a big budget flick.