Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Water For Elephants.
DVD Review
Water For Elephants, starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinsen, Christopher Waltz, Fox 2000, 2011
Everybody, well, almost everybody had been to the circus as a kid, or later maybe. Many probably had their first exposure to the circus when some small side-show ramble wreak operation showed up made up of a three truck gypsy caravan came to you not big city town and put on a show or two and then headed out, laughing at the rubes as they left. Or maybe your first look was even less than a circus, a two bit neon-flamed carnival with every drifter, grafter and midnight sifter trying (and mostly succeeding) to get you to part with your hard-earned dough (back in the day maybe you had a kid job, mowing lawns or a paper route and so those were really hard-earned dollars that were soon departed). But mainly, if you didn’t look too closely, at the ragged costumes, the ancient girlies, the broken-down animals, and the broken-down performers you bought into the grand circus illusion, the spectacle. What you bought into as well was the cotton candy, the kewpie dolls, and the other gee-gads. Just don’t deny it okay
And that illusion, or the creation of that illusion, for a couple of hours while rube or sophisticate was in the audience is what the film under review, Water For Elephants, is all about. Also about that seamy back story that any form of entertainment from kid street shows to Super Bowl extravaganza tries to keep away from. And, naturally since this is a cinematic effort based on a historical romance novel, there has to be a little off-hand love interest to keep the“rubes” in the theater audience (or at DVD home) interested. And just as naturally if Reese Witherspoon is in the house (last seen by this reviewer Oscar-winning for her performance as June Carter Cash in Walk The Line) that love interest must be both torrid and meaningful. And it is.
The gist of the story (as told by ancient Hal Holbrook looking back to his youth) is the trials and tribulations of a veterinary doctor (almost) who by some personal misfortune winds up hopping a circus train during the Great Depression (the 1930s one not the current one) and who uses his skill to both help the animals and to become a key aide to the mad man circus owner (and ring master) who also happens to be a very jealous and evil husband of one Reese Witherspoon. The circus, as lots of things in those days, was ready to go belly up if there was not star attraction to pull the rubes in (basically get them under the tent and they are yours, the trick is to get them in). Presto, Ruby the elephant, not without some serious Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals-type trauma brought on by the evil ring master, saves the day for a while. In the meantime that handsome young vet falls for one very married ring master’s wife. And she for him. Something has to give, and it does. But next time the circus is in town think twice, no think three times, before starry-eyed thinking about heading out of town on that road.
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