Life of Pi ☆☆☆☆½

First thing I have to say is OH how I wish I'd gone to the cinema to see this one.
Second: don't ever watch films that are meant to be this stunning on television that either has no HD or said HD has broken. Like mine. Also you need a TV that won't cut the subtitles out of the screen no matter at which setting you have it. Like mine does.

Despite these set backs owing to poor quality hardware, I loved this film. It was beautiful and majestic and I really really need to see it on a huge HD telly using a blu ray disc.

Based on the prize winning novel by Yann Martel (which, horror of horrors, I have not read), it follows the story of Piscine, a boy who is the sole survivor of a terrible tragedy as the ship taking him and his family to Canada sinks beneath the waves in a terrifying storm.

Pi is left with only his wits and a tiger, Richard Parker, on a boat drifting across the Pacific ocean. Fending for themselves, forming a relationship, encountering such strange and wonderous but equally terrifying sights, serves to make this one of the most extraordinary and visually arresting films in quite some time.

Even on my slightly pants telly I could tell how spectacular the CGI actually was. Poor Suraj Sharma who played Pi was absolutely battered by waves, rocked on the partial boat that was one of the few real pieces of the set, and thrown overboard by the ferocity of the wave machines. You felt you were watching a real shipwreck and seeing real animals panic and attack one another in confined spaces.

This is a heartbreaking film. The animals just mentioned are injured, scared, trapped with Pi and at the end of the day act on instinct. The revelation at the end causes you to really pause and think about the differences between humans and animals, which I have always felt was a superior attitude of humans to believe themselves so much better.

If you have not yet had the chance to see Life of Pi I wholly recommend you do. It is a relatively simple story, two protagonists trapped on a boat having to survive. But it is extraordinary and a delight to watch.