All Critics (201)
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Top Critics (42)
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Fresh (178)
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Rotten (23)
Mr. Lee's film is stronger as a visual experience-especially in 3-D-than an emotional one, but it has a final plot twist that may also change what you thought you knew about the ancient art of storytelling.
There's an audience out there for this movie, but the question is whether they will find it.
The movie's energy peters out in a series of book-club conversations about divine will, the power of storytelling, and the resilience of the human spirit.
A movie that can't be dismissed because there is too much in it but can't be embraced because it's all spread too thin.
This transcendent fable carries a real sting in its tail. Ang Lee has made a bold and wondrous movie, one of his best.
Claudio Miranda's luminous camera, set to Mychael Danna's intoxicating score, captures all manner of wild delights.
The screenplay reaches out to people of all religions and faiths and gives you the confidence to make your own mind up about things.
Lee is a wizard, Life of Pi is an incredible spectacle and the technical effects are brilliant.
Working with perceptive writer David Magee (Finding Neverand), Ang Lee creates one of the most thoughtful, artistic blockbusters ever made by a Hollywood studio.
Life of Pi is chiefly to be recommended for the punch of its core story. Never mind the cod-philosophical breadth - feel the impressive emotional depth.
With Life Of Pi, Ang Lee has delivered bold, inspirational and intelligent cinema, the likes of which is rarely seen - and for that reason alone this is unmissable.
A film of staggering beauty, great intelligence, high technical ability and no little humour.
Life Of Pi must be the most beautiful film of the year, a technical marvel, and magic realism at its most magical.
I thought of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the King of Swamp Castle's determination to build on that sodden earth. It stayed up in the end but it wouldn't take much for it to fall over.
Despite some lovely images and those eyepopping effects, it is a shallow and self-important shaggy-dog story - or shaggy-tiger story - and I am bemused by the saucer-eyed critical responses it's been getting.
You could just wallow in the visual lavishness of this movie and not think at all about what it 'means' and be blown away by it.
Lee maintains a very precise balance between the wondrous and the outrageous so we are never taken for fools in swallowing this tall tale - it might just be true.
Is Lee's film a fable? Is it an adventure? No, it's a super-movie.
Ang Lee has, for the most part, constructed such a wondrous piece of filmmaking that even the 3D works.
Beautifully shot and superbly written, this is an emotionally engaging, thought provoking drama with jaw-dropping special effects work and a superb central performance from Suraj Sharma.
Ang Lee's astonishing adaptation of Yann Martel's fantastical bestseller makes it hard to believe how anyone dubbed Life of Pi 'unfilmable'.
The real strength of the film is in its stunning imagery, which evokes the mysteries of the universe and stirs great tension as Pi and a truly lifelike CGI tiger pussyfoot around each other on the way to enlightenment.
Yes, this is fantasy cinema. One man, alone with his wonderment, suspended between sky and sea.
Perhaps you need an unshakeable faith and the ability to believe in fantastical stories to really appreciate it.
We're left, then, with a film that is a visual marvel, with an extraordinary story, that's dragged down by a very ordinary lead actor. A stronger performance could have made a good movie great.
In answer to the film's central question, this is exactly the type of story I like to be told, in all its facets and complexities, and I'm thankful for those that helped in the telling of it.
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