Cutting right to the chase…did I read Sara Gruen’s best selling book? No. But I shared theatre seats with a group of women who HAD read the book though none of them were in AWE of the book, so basically the movie could do no harm either way. Sure, there were comments from each about who was missing, what was changed, or why such and such had been tampered with….but that’s adaptation for you…it has to translate to screen to achieve the imagery. One woman summed it up best by saying “the only time movies don’t work from adaptation is when it’s your favorite book EVER because then you already know in your head what the characters look like.” Okay, I’ll buy that. Yet it was collectively clear from all these women….the movie was really fantastic and more of a love story than the book’s version. And with Twilights Robert Pattinson in the role of an orphaned veterinarian, how can you go wrong.
Much like Titanic, the movie opens on a confused old man, Jacob Jankowski (Hal Holbrook) trying to remember which way back to the nursing home, when he sees a black and white photo of his young love, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) sitting high atop an elephant named “Rosie.” That’s when the memories come flooding back of the great disaster – again think Titanic – when a historical circus incident happened. Now he’s young again (Robert Pattinson), we’re in the Great Depression traveling with the Benzini Brothers circus, an unemployed vet, white horses, and a ringmaster named August (Christoph Waltz). Whether you’ve read the book or not, you can’t help but think it’s not often you come across this type of plot. I was all elephant ears as each line unfolded and we moved deeper into Pattinson’s story. Book readers and non-book readers – there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Richard LaGravenese (The Horse Whisperer, Bridges of Madison County) does a superb job of bringing us along for the ever-constant and unfolding adventure directed by Francis Lawrence I Am Legend. The movie is ironically a three ring circus of Pattinson falling for Witherspoon, and Witherspoon seemingly more abused by her husband Walz, then the way – third – Walz abuses the animals. (Except he doesn’t prod Witherspoon with a stick. Well, not really. But almost. He just prods the passion from her soul.) There’s something old-fashioned fifties about this movie. Think of Clark Gable in a rolled up white shirt with beads of sweat on his tanned forehead. Couple that with the perfectly-lit-platinum blonde, untouchable, unreachable atop the elephant. Can she finally learn to be a real woman, take risks, take chances, slide down into his arms and end up with the man of her dreams (much as Rose Dawson in Titanic.) In a soon-to-be-summer-blockbuster world of 3D and anemic retreads (Thor? I mean, really), this story is highly entertaining in a join-the-girlfriends-for-a-rainy-matinee-way that even men will find entertaining. “Ladies and Gentleman step right up” because it’s well worth the price of admission. Three and a half tiaras