Life of Pi Reviews
Movie Talk
Everywhere you look there are images of beguiling beauty: a mirror-like sea reflecting golden clouds; a sudden swarm of flying fish; an island bristling with meerkats; and a breaching whale glowing with bioluminescence as it leaps out of the water.
We Got This Covered
Ang Lee's Life of Pi is a visual masterpiece, often transcending the boundaries of special effects and what they're capable of, but the film's actual story is hollow.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Cinema Sight
The search for religion takes a back seat to the spectacular visual splendor of a boy floating alone on the ocean with a vicious tiger.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Movie Metropolis
"Life of Pi" isn't just a visual effects movie stuck at sea. There's a compelling story here as well.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8/10
Cinema Crazed
Endorses the notion of blind faith, and denial as a positive character trait.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
KWQC-TV (Iowa)
Mystical and endless as the number pi, 'The Life of Pi' works on a number of levels, all of them enchanting.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
Takes some time to find its flow. The CGI-tiger is the greatest marvel here-the intensity of its stare alone makes it the truest fiction of all. Religious platitudes remain fairly pat; the final allegory's overstated.
Fan The Fire
The morals of the story don't come through, while the film's extensive metaphors are belatedly rammed down your throat like a get out of jail free card.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
3AW
Ang Lee's extraordinary, lyrical, beautiful, moving, genre-defying Life of Pi can be recommended with the simple, sweeping assurance that it is unlike anything you have ever seen before.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Moviedex
A dazzling digital dreamscape that sets staggering new heights for what can be accomplished with 3D technology.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Projection Booth
Martel's novel could have yielded a greater film in different hands, but Lee's work remains one to be grateful for.
The Standard
(Ang) Lee has gone above and beyond, executing the job with near flawless precision.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Austin Chronicle
When adrift with Pi and the tiger on the open sea, the film is at its most wondrous: a ravishing spectacle that treads judiciously on the infinite line between what's possible and impossible.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Boston Phoenix
Life poses as a spiritual experience, but it's more like a postcard.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The Mercury
What better analogy for our place in the universe than a couple of scared creatures stranded on a precarious liferaft in the middle of a vast nothingness?
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
The Popcorn Junkie
Life of Pi is director Ang Lee's artistic expression of faith on film that's close to his very own version of the Sistine Chapel, minus the neck pain.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Cinema Autopsy
Bleak facts or magical stories, science or faith, connected or alone, instinct or animals with souls - these are the dynamics explored by every aspect of Life of Pi.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
The Sun Herald
Flawed it may be, but at its core lies an epic journey that shows Lee reborn as a creative force.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
ABC Radio Brisbane
I haven't been able to shake the thought-provoking finale. Don't expect to leave this story behind as you exit the theatre. Life Of Pi has something to say.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
Observer [UK]
The 227 days at sea are a test of physique, mental adaptation and faith, and Suraj Sharma makes Pi's spiritual journey as convincing as his nautical one.
