Water for Elephants Movie Review

This past Friday Water for Elephants came out in theaters.  The movie is based on the book that was written by Sara Gruen.  The story is told from the point of view of  Jacob Jankowski, played by Robert Pattinson, he is a 90ish year old man who finds himself on a rainy night at the local circus and he relives and tells him story to one of the Circus owners/workers telling him about his life back in the depression when he worked for the circus.

With the story being told you learn about Jacob and how an aspiring Vet ends up dropping out of school and "running" away with the circus.  Jacob ends up finding a job he loves, taking care of the animals in the circus and falling in love with Marlena Rosenbluth, played by Reese Witherspoon, the wife of August Rosenbluth, played by Christoph Waltz, who owns the circus.

Jacob learns while working at the circus for a short time how dangerous August truly is to everyone around and how making more money is more important then the health and well being of any animals or humans that work for him.  Numerous account of animals being abused and beaten by August for not preforming up to his standards and staff being thrown off the train like garbage to keep more money in August's pocket.  Every time that Jacob comes to the point to leave the circus something else happens to keep him tied to it.

I have not personally read the book so when I went to the movie I was going in an a new viewer and all I heard was that the book was fabulous.  I can say from experience with the book club I am a member of in my city usually when there is a book and a movie.  If you have read the book first you may not be fully satisfied with the movie.  As with a book the author has no limits to the amount of words that need to be used to tell the story and with a movie they deal with a certain run time and have to create the script to fit into that allotted time.  Which of course means clearly parts of the novel will have to either be left out of they have to find a more direct way to get the point across.

Having said all of this I really enjoyed the movie.  I believe Robert and Reese were great in their roles and had great chemistry and this was the best so far I have seen Robert Pattinson.  Do not get me wrong I am a huge Twilight fan, but there has been so much talk if he has the skills and can act and I personally feel that this shows he does have talent and is more then a good looking vampire!  As for Reese she is just adorable and do I really need to say more :-)

No matter you have read the book or not I would recommend heading out and check out the movie!  Of course, if you have read the book already try to have an open mind and see the movie as a seperate entity from the book and see it as a work of art as it really is. 

As for myself although Jacob talks about his time during the depression I can say in our current economic standing there is much that we can learn from the movie with regards to the recession that we are in.
Remember that this too shall pass and what is more important is to remember to care for one another in our own circus called life!