Venus vs. Mars ... Water for Elephants

 

********This is the first installment of the Venus vs. Mars series!! My good friend Sean Hill of http://hillstreetviewz.blogspot fame will be providing the “Mars” point of view of this film. Let the games begin!!**********

 

Venus Says:

 

The way I came about watching this movie was by chance... I don’t remember seeing the trailers for it which is strange because I’m such a huge movie buff.  My daughter and her friend happened to rent it one night because they said it was the only movie that appeared worth watching. Within the first 5 mins of the movie I was hooked….  I didn’t realize this movie had such a romantic flair, and Reese Witherspoon plays an awesome role of being the Ring Master’s wife who falls for the man who trains the elephants.  It’s not a movie about adultery, but rather a story about two people who fall in love that cannot be together.  The storyline is not just about romance and falling in love, but it’s also about being a family and relying upon one another when that is all you have.  If you haven’t seen it, you need to – it’s a sweet surprise of a movie that will make you want to watch it time and time again.  It’s become one of my all-time favorites – even to the point of me giving it to my Charles for our one year anniversary, writing on the back of the case, “This was a nice surprise for us – we fell in love with it together”…. proving also that men will enjoy this movie just as much :) Venus gives 4 stars!!

Mars Says:

 

It’s Valentines season and love is in the air. Stores are stocked with every kind of Valentines Day cards, florists have more stock than they know what to do with, and fancy restaurants are booked solid for the day. This is also the time some men will try to placate their significant others by sitting down and watching a romantic movie with their wives. If the wrong movie is selected it can be a grueling experience.

 

            Water for Elephants is a TERRIBLE title for a romantic film. It in no way screams romance but I know not to judge a book by its cover but that title would not make me want to pick up the book. The film starts out with one of my most hated plot devices which is the “let me tell you the story of my life and thereby I will eliminate all dramatic tension as to whether I will live or die because I am here telling the story so of course I live”. We then flashback to the past and meet the younger version of the story teller, in this instance it’s non other than Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, playing a young veterinarian student named Jacob (insert your own Twilight joke here). Jacob’s rich, well his parents are at least, until they are killed in auto accident and he finds out that his parents had blew their wealth on his tuition. So what’s a young homeless person to do? He decides to leave town with a few possessions and the clothes on his back. He decides to hop aboard a passing train and the train just HAPPENS to be a train for a traveling circus!! Now that is luck!

 

            He meets the star of the show, Marlena (Resse Witherspoon) and her husband August (Django Unchained’s Christoph Waltz) who is circus owner and head animal trainer. Of course Jacob is immediately smitten by her at first sight although it is unclear if the feeling is mutual. Well it just so happens that August is in need of vet and Jacob is hired. Later in the film August purchases an elephant (the elephant of the title I assume but there is only one elephant in the film so shouldn’t the title be Water for an Elephant?) August is having issues training the elephant until Jacob discovers that the elephant only responds to Polish which HE just so happens to speak!!! Somewhere during this time Jacob and Marlena fall in love. August finds out, complications arise, things happen, we go back to present day and find out what happens to Marlena and Jacob.

 

            This isn’t a very good film and it is not very focused. The movie seems more concerned with Jacobs’s relationship to the elephant than Marlena. The characters really have no chemistry and August is such an awful person that of course Marlena would be attracted to Jacob. However we don’t care about their coupling because we don’t get to know Marlena all that well.

 

So Mars says that guys will be incredibly bored by this film and I would hope that women would be bored as well. I didn’t find this movie to be very romantic at all. In fact I thought the elephant had more charm than Reese Witherspoon. The film is only worth seeing to partake in yet another suburb performance by Christoph Waltz. This guy is an incredible talent and gives this film more weight than it deserves. Bottom line on this one fellas, if your significant other suggest you snuggle up and watch this film I would suggest faking some sort of illness(it is flu season right now hint hint) and go to separate room and watch a Scorsese film. Sorry Venus, this one stinks!!! Mars gives it 2 stars!!