Life of Pi Reviews
Top CriticFlawed, yes, but marvellously ambitious, and unforgettably gorgeous to look at.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Don't wait for Netflix. Life of Pi demands to be seen on the biggest screen you can find.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Shelve your dislike of 3D glasses. Quiet your nattering criticism of CGI. Because Lee and his able crew wield those tools like wands.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Like that other "unfilmable" novel, Cloud Atlas, it has, of course, been turned into a movie -- with rather happier results.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Ang Lee's signature style -- tasteful, measured, and devoid of personality -- translates surprisingly well to 3-D.
Every once in a long while, the right director comes across the right project at just the right moment, and things so often discordant fall into perfect harmony.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Pi's story makes you believe why Pi would believe in God, sacrificer of innocents, tester of souls, creator of rapturous beauty.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
"Pi" is a wonder to see; too bad it's not wondrous to feel.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
"Life of Pi," even more so on the screen, is a dream to help us keep the nightmares at bay.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Though the film's setup trudges and its closing is too pat, that hour or so on the raft is something special, and few would dive into the story's soul as Lee does.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
"Life of Pi" both draws the audience in and encourages it to settle back, the better to enjoy its virtually nonstop display of daring, wonder and cinematic virtuosity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
It's so hypnotically beautiful that people will be using it to calibrate their new TV monitors.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
One of the most remarkable films in recent years.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
If the story, based on the popular novel by Yann Martel, can't quite keep pace with the look of the film (and, alas, it can't) it will take you awhile to notice.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
With Life of Pi, Lee takes on a not-so-crouching tiger to bring audiences a wondrously enthralling adventure fable.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
If the religious discussions in David Magee's script occasionally seem contrived, they're also quite sincere.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
An adventure yarn that is gloriously old-fashioned - and often just glorious.
The movie works on a bedrock level that many ostensible action films forget.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
"Life of Pi" is an absolutely gorgeous movie, aglow with color and filled with wraparound 3-D effects.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel's beautiful little book about a young man and the sea and a tiger, has transformed into a big, imposing and often lovely 3-D experience.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Life of Pi puts 3D in the hands of a worldclass film artist. Ang Lee uses 3D with the delicacy and lyricism of a poet. You don't just watch this movie, you live it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
However wishy-washy the story's theology may sometimes be, Lee's mastery of imagery is superb, as he effortlessly shows off what technology means in the hands of a true artist.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The film, at its best, celebrates the idiosyncratic wonders and dangers of raw, ravaging nature.
Ang Lee's thrillingly audacious film transforms this inconceivable premise into visual poetry, high adventure and sheer enchantment.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Magical realism was rarely so magical and never before so real.
With "Life of Pi," Lee outdoes himself visually, without a doubt setting a new standard for 3-D, a technology Hollywood has mostly abused with crass recklessness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
... the movie handles an alternate version of the story, and its ramifications, in an almost shockingly perfunctory manner. Which I think, in the end, compromises what the story wants to convey.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
I felt like I'd been invited to a seven-course dinner, and all seven turned out to be cake - and then the host insisted on delivering a lecture about how cake would bring me closer to God.
Lee and screenwriter David Magee find rich and clever ways to translate even Pi's stillest moments, the film unfolding through intricate flashbacks, whimsical voice-overs, harrowing sea hazards and exquisite flashes of fantasy and hallucination.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The film is transcendent.
There isn't a dull moment in the film, and there are about 300 worthy of a "wow."
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Melds a harrowing high-seas adventure with a dreamy meditation on the very nature of storytelling.
A gorgeous and accomplished rendering of the massive best-seller.
