Day 158: I Give It A Year

A couple realise that married life isn’t the fairytale they were quite expecting but they agree to try and wait a year to see if that’s what they need.

If you’ve both realised that there’s a problem and you know you’re not right for each other then why wait a year? Just bloody end it now and you can stop making each other miserable. Nat (Rose Byrne) was getting annoyed at Josh (Rafe Spall) for always being in the house and not taking the bin out/putting the toilet seat down, but surely they lived together before they were married so she would’ve known all this before now? I mean, it was never said if they did live together or not beforehand but who gets married without living together first nowadays? I just don’t believe that they wouldn’t have been aware of their incompatibility long before now.

There were some laughs but overall, it was a bit boring. I didn’t really care what was happening and the ending seemed a bit implausible.

5/10

Day 134: Life of Pi

While travelling from India to Canada on a Japanese cargo ship, which is transporting animals from a zoo in Pondicherry and the Patel family who own them, there is a violent storm and the ship sinks. Fortunately, Pi (Suraj Sharma) is thrown into a lifeboat and is saved. Unfortunately, there’s a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger on board with him. The numbers soon dwindled and Pi is left alone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean just trying to survive and to stay out of the way of the tiger.

So, I’m going to be really annoying and just say it: I prefer the book. I know it’s not really fair to compare books and films because they tell stories in different ways and with different degrees of interaction from the reader/viewer, but still. It could just be that I’ve read the book quite a lot and I really do love it, and so I’m finding it hard to separate my love for everything that happens in the book to what actually happens in the film. I’m not saying it strayed massively away from the book (there are only a couple of things I can think of that are missing or different) but it was a completely different experience. The book draws you into the panic and the devastation and the endless nothingness that Pi goes through during his time at sea, and so when he has brief moments of relief or happiness you really do feel it with him. This was definitely lacking in the film, I felt no real connection with Pi. That’s not a slight against Suraj Sharma, he was very good and I hope he’ll be in more things. There was just something missing for me.

The shots were beautiful and Suraj Sharma did a great job of keeping me interested in his character. It was a good film. All I’ll say is, read the book.

7/10