Water for Elephants (2011) - Robert Pattinson as Leonardio DiCaprio in Titanic; It is that Simple

In the film adaptation of Water for Elephants, Robert Pattinson takes us to life on the road in the circus after the great depression. He is in for a rude awakening once he is told that his parents died in a car crash, and that he is without any money. He takes to the road, and we get to experience the brutality of life in the thirties, when there was not any safety net for Americans, and you had to learn how to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, if you wanted to continue to live.

He finds himself infatuated with Marlena, the wife of August, a circus owner. To make a long story short, he gets his butt kicked again, and again, and yet again, and cheats death attempting to be with Marlena. In the end, his saving grace is an elephant, and him and Marlena live a regular life for a short period of time while he finishes his degree as a veterinarian, and he then provides a comfortable life for her while she works in the circus.

I have mixed feelings about this film. It comes across as thinly veiled attempt to make Robert Pattinson the hero that Leonardo DiCaprio played as Jack Dawson in the film Titanic; a punk that is willing to go to any lengths to get the girl of his dreams, that just happens to be the girl of someone else, despite getting knocked down again and again. Robert Pattinson represents a new generation of men whose masculinity is measured by their resolve and dedication to their woman, even though they lack the outward, traditional masculinity of men from a bygone era. These are not your man's favorite man, but they are the sensitive, yet dedicated, man who will take a bullet for you, even if he does look like a punk doing so. The movie is also a slick way of introducing the politics of animal rights in an interesting way, as the same elephant that is victim of the film, is also the hero of the film alongside Robert Pattinson himself. The metaphor, that the consciousness of the decision to protect the rights of animals can make a man out of boy, is not lost on audiences, but at the same time, is not enough to make us love the film; Robert Pattinson still has his work cut out for him, and while the elephant is definitely a character in the film, one walks away with the sense that Silver is better portrayed in the book in which this film is based off of.

Having said that much, I felt that, while you could pass this film off on a new generation, this is definitely a film that we have seen before. While I do feel that Robert Pattinson is a great actor, this is a mere characterization of the "new man", post-modern, and the same punk that he plays in all of his films, most notably in Remember Me (2010). He simply has the great luck to play this typecast character in a tremendous setting, alongside great talent. The fact that he gets to play opposite Reese Witherspoon is a definite improvement from his cast in the Twilight series.

Acting may not be what it was as little as a decade ago but there are still some great films to be found. The fact that Robert Pattinson is a character that you can learn to hate, shows just how great of an actor he is capable of being. He simply has not had the opportunity to prove that to American audiences, but this is one interesting film in which he is allowed to make his case. However, the fact that he never gets to work in films with story lines that are as engaging as say, what Johnny Depp routinely acts in, speaks volumes to the detachment that Hollywood has and the lack of integrity. Far too often, films like Water for Elephants are buried underneath the excitement for another installation of Shrek, translating The Smurfs onto the big screen, a reboot of The Muppets, or Puss n' Boots. While a lot of these remakes and reboots have been successful, and paid off for the studios, new, fresh material is desperately needed in Hollywood. When movies like Water for Elephants fail, it is obvious why audiences are quick to watch The Smurfs.