“Water for Elephants” brings the circus to town

“Water for Elephants” gives off an air of self-satisfaction, and you can see why. What film wouldn’t be pleased with having a No. 1 bestseller as source material, an unapologetically picturesque world for its setting and major players such as Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson and a superb Christoph Waltz as its stars. What’s not to like?

There is quite a bit to enjoy in a film that certainly qualifies as broad-based popular entertainment. But because the ingredients are so promising, there hangs over this serviceable project the wish that it had turned out better still. Director Francis Lawrence, who works in music videos as well as features, has an unmistakable gift for bravura spectacle, but the absence of convincing romantic chemistry means that the emotional connection that should be this film’s birthright is not really there.

That spectacle comes courtesy of the 1931 Benzini Bros. circus setting of Sara Gruen’s epic romance about a man, a woman and a 9,000-pound elephant. The Benzini troupe bills itself grandly, but the reality, as one of Gruen’s characters says, is that “it’s probably not even the fiftieth most spectacular show on earth.”

No matter. In the hands of veteran production designer Jack Fisk and his team, costume designer Jacqueline West and master cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, that tarnished, bawdy milieu, including the raising of a massive circus tent that could seat 800, is brought to impressive and detailed life. The romance of the carnival is strong in this film, and it’s not too much to say that it’s the element viewers will come away remembering most.

If things had gone as planned, young Jacob Jankowski (Pattinson) would never even have heard of Benzini Bros. But his hopes of becoming a veterinarian with a Cornell degree are dashed, and the Depression-era freight train he hops in despair turns out to house the circus in all its ragtag glory.

While Gruen’s book alternates chapters of young Jacob at the circus with a 93-year-old Jacob languishing in a contemporary nursing home, Richard LaGravenese’s screenplay cuts the elderly Jacob down to a bare minimum framing device. Which, given Hal Holbrook’s overeagerness with the role, is probably a good idea.

LaGravenese’s smart script, unable by the nature of the medium to duplicate some of the book’s narrative sleights of hand, in general tightens the novel’s action and puts a bit of a bright PG-13 sheen on some of the raunchier aspects of the original narrative.

(www.latimes.com)