“ Water for Elephants ,” Sara Gruen’s lightweight page turner about a Depression-era traveling circus, would appear to be a vehicle ready-made for a prestigious family movie on the order of “ Seabiscuit .” With its star attraction, a gentle elephant named Rosie who understands Polish, the novel belongs to the John Irving school of semi-serious whimsy with allegorical overtones. 
 
 But the timid screen adaptation, directed by Francis Lawrence (“I Am Legend”) from a screenplay by Richard LaGravenese, short-circuits the novel’s quirky charms and period atmosphere by its squeamish attitude toward gritty circus life and smothers the drama under James Newton Howard’s insufferable wall-to-wall musical soup. 
 
 In Ms. Gruen’s novel, the beaten and mistreated Rosie is a heroine for all seasons. As you pore through “Water for Elephants,” a book with a special appeal to readers who get teary about animal stories, you develop a deepening sense that she is a noble creature, the elephant in the room who never forgets, who knows all and harbors a primal sense of justice. 
 
 With her caring trainer, Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson), a veterinary student who drops out of Cornell after his parents’ sudden deaths, Rosie shares a quasi-mystical understanding of good and evil. That intuitive rapport — the soul of the novel — is barely felt in this cool, placid film, which so studiously tries to cram all of the book’s incidents and characters into two hours that it forgets it is telling a story. I’m no big fan of animal movies, but “Water for Elephants” could have used some spritzes of “National Velvet” or “Lassie Come Home” sentimentality. 
 
 The monotonous tone is established early on with Jacob’s plodding narration, which takes over after an introduction by a rheumy-eyed Hal Holbrook (wonderful, as always), playing the aged Jacob. Mr. Pattinson’s simplistic narration, unfortunately, affects the gee-whiz language of a grade-school reading book. Each time his voice breaks in to advance the plot, the movie grinds to a halt. Mr. Pattinson is only partly to blame for the fatuity of a character who even in the novel is really a generic male ingénue with no personality. In the film there is nothing about him to suggest a Depression-era youth whose parents’ deaths have thrown him into the world without a safety net. He is more like a “Gossip Girl”-ready 21st-century heartthrob who has exhausted his trust fund. 
 
 Instead of evoking a pungent vision of rough-and-tumble circus life in hard times, “Water for Elephants” concentrates on the explosive romantic triangle of the circus’s volatile owner, August (Christoph Waltz); his sultry, platinum-blond wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon); and Jacob. Ms. Witherspoon certainly has the wherewithal to play Marlena, a hard-boiled Jean Harlow type and product of foster homes whom August plucked out of poverty, married and turned into a circus goddess. But despite hints of a lower-class twang in her speech, Ms. Witherspoon (probably at the director’s request) resists creating an authentic period character. 
 
 The romantic chemistry between Ms. Witherspoon and Mr. Pattinson is nil. When they finally make love in a scene that is so dimly lighted you can hardly see them, it has all the heat of a kissy-poo game of spin the bottle played by 11-year-olds. 
 
 It is left for Mr. Waltz to inject “Water for Elephants” with the little sense of danger it is able to muster. As the imperious, sadistic, furiously possessive August, he brings the same intensity that infused his Oscar-winning portrayal of Col. Hans Landa in “Inglourious Basterds.” Treacherous, ruthless, greedy and cursed with an uncontrollable temper, he vents his pent-up rage by viciously beating Rosie with a bull hook. These are the only moments when the essential savagery of circus life surfaces. 
 
 Mr. Lawrence is so busy awkwardly jamming the novel’s minor events together and introducing (before dropping) colorful minor characters who have so little screen time that they barely register, that the movie fails to develop a sense of wonder. After all, what is a circus but a surreal pageant celebrating the animal side of human nature? 
 
 Brief scenes of the circus arriving in a town and pitching its tent provide momentary jolts of realism, and you almost smell the manure that Jacob has to shovel during his apprenticeship and taste the rotten, fly-covered meat he is instructed to feed “the cats.” But overwhelmingly the movie seems perversely intent on being “nice.” Its musical wallpaper accompanies panoramic cinematography that soothes rather than catches the eye. 
 
 As a piece of storytelling, the film displays its most disastrous choice when it makes the book’s climatic rampage seem perfunctory. This sloppily directed scene, which ends almost as soon as it begins, leaves you feeling cheated out of a necessary cathartic release. 
 
 Where is Cecil B. DeMille when we need him, I wondered, as “Water for Elephants” drew to its dull, tidy conclusion. 
 
 The film is so bland that it made me long for “The Greatest Show on Earth,” the 1952 DeMille extravaganza that used the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. That movie left you feeling as if you’d enjoyed at least one roll in the sawdust. 
 
 “Water for Elephants” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has mild sexual situations, some violence and strong language. 
 
 WATER FOR ELEPHANTS 
 
 Opens on Friday nationwide. 
 
 Directed by Francis Lawrence; written by Richard LaGravenese, based on the novel by Sara Gruen; director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto; edited by Alan Edward Bell; music by James Newton Howard; production design by Jack Fisk; costumes by Jacqueline West; produced by Gil Netter, Erwin Stoff and Andrew R. Tennenbaum; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 2 hours. 
 
 WITH: Reese Witherspoon (Marlena), Robert Pattinson (Jacob), Christoph Waltz (August), Paul Schneider (Charlie), Jim Norton (Camel), Hal Holbrook (Old Jacob), Mark Povinelli (Kinko/Walter) and Richard Brake (Grady); and Tai (Rosie), Uggie (Queenie), Ice (Silver Star) and Major (Rex). ||||| Water for Elephants 
 
 April 21, 2011 
 
 There's something endearingly old-fashioned about a love story involving a beautiful bareback rider and a kid who runs off to join the circus. What makes "Water for Elephants" more intriguing is a third character, reminding us why Christoph Waltz deserved his supporting actor Oscar for "Inglourious Basterds" (2009). He plays the circus owner, who is married to the bareback rider and keeps her and everyone else in his iron grip. 
 
 The story, based on the best-seller by Sara Gruen, is told as a flashback by an old man named Jacob (Hal Holbrook), who lost his parents in 1931, dropped out of Cornell University's veterinary school, hit the road and hopped a train that happened, wouldn't you know, to be a circus train. Played by Robert Pattinson as a youth, he is naive and excited, and his eyes fill with wonder as he sees the beautiful Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) on her white show horse. The owner August (Waltz) is prepared to throw him off the train until he learns young Jacob knows something about veterinary medicine. 
 
 
 
 In an age of prefabricated special effects and obviously phony spectacle, it's sort of old-fashioned (and a pleasure) to see a movie made of real people and plausible sets. The production designer, Jack Fisk, has created a believable one-ring circus here, and even the train itself has a personality. (August and Jacob spend an implausible amount of time walking or running on top of it, but never mind.) 
 
 
 
 The dynamic in the story depends on August's jealousy of Marlena, and her stubborn loyalty to their marriage contract. This is where Waltz makes his contribution. Shorter than Pattinson, indeed hardly taller than Witherspoon, he rules over everyone as a hard-bitten taskmaster whose easy charm conceals a cold inner core; it's the same dynamic he used as the merciless Nazi in "Inglourious Basterds." He's much given to offering champagne toasts with a knife hidden inside. 
 
 
 
 In the early Depression, times are hard and jobs few. The circus is deep in debt, and August produces a new star attraction he believes can save it. This is Rosie, a middle-aged elephant, who he thinks Marlena can ride, and Jacob can train and care for, although neither has worked with an elephant before. Scenes involving the personality and language comprehension of elephants create an intrinsic charm, and the movie surrounds them with a convincing portrait of circus life on the road. 
 
 
 
 The film's climax involves a series of dire events I will not describe, except to say it's a little unclear how they are started into motion. It's also unclear why Marlena continues to be such a dutiful wife long after August no longer deserves that privilege — but the fact that she does saves the film from dissolving entirely into melodrama. 
 
 
 
 "Water for Elephants" was directed by Francis Lawrence, whose "I Am Legend" and "Constantine" were not predictions of this relatively classic film. The screenplay is by Richard LaGravenese, whose "The Horse Whisperer" also showed a sympathy for the personalities of animals. Rosie is not as charismatic as a horse, and as Jacob observes she suffers from dry skin, but you have to concede that her timing is impeccable. This is good sound family entertainment, a safe PG-13 but not a dumb one, and it's a refreshing interlude before we hurtle into the summer blockbuster season. ||||| The Reese Witherspoon-Robert Pattinson film will please fans of Sara Gruen’s best seller, but it lacks the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen. 
 
 A decorous, respectable adaptation of Sara Gruen's engaging best-seller, Water for Elephants would have come more excitingly alive with stronger doses of Depression-era grit and sexual spunk. The 1931 circus setting and a love triangle involving three exceedingly attractive people provides a constant wash of scenic pleasure and the film's fidelity to its source will receive nodding approval from the book's many fans, which should result in solid, if unspectacular commercial results for this Fox release. But the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen is missing. 
 
 Films about traveling circuses, and the often daring and dodgy people who worked in them, used to be relatively commonplace in American movies and it could be that the novelty of seeing such a troupe, traveling from one town to another on a train with dozens of performers, workers and lots of animals in tow, might be enough to captivate a fair share of people today, just as Gruen's 2006 novel did. 
 
 Furthermore, the central dilemma—that of a beautiful woman caught between her debt to the circus impresario who plucked her from a dismal existence to make her a circus star as well as his wife and her mounting passion for a handsome young man who escapes a personal tragedy by joining the company—may be well-worn but can always work in the right hands, and Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson and Christoph Waltz are all more than up to the task. 
 
 So it's mostly a question of approach. Had the same story been made at the time it's set, in the early 1930s, one can easily imagine at least two distinct and equally effective potential takes on the tale: One, directed by Frank Borzage at Fox, could have been a exalted love story between two young people fated to be together despite the obstacles, while another, directed by Michael Curtiz at Warner Bros., would have been a punchy, down-and-dirty affair about lowlifes scraping by during the depths of the Depression. 
 
 In fact, had screenwriter Richard LaGravenese, who's done a mostly fine job whittling down the novel to fit comfortably within two hours' running time, settled in to watch a dozen early-1930s Warner Bros. films before writing, some hints of period slang, brassy attitude and regional accents might have profitably made their way into the chatter to provide an idea of the different vernacular in in use then. Even a tiny change—the man informing Pattinson's character of his parents' death at the outset states they were in a “car” accident rather than an “automobile” mishap, as in the book—reveals a trace of fear about the receptivity of a modern audience to antiquated speech. And in those days, indelible character actors would have brought to life a score of insolent, wise-cracking, phrase-making secondary parts with just a few lines apiece. 
 
 Under Francis Lawrence's sleekly studied direction, everything has been smoothed out to the extent that even dire poverty does not seem entirely unappealing. Certainly the three leads never do. Looking 300 per cent better than he did in his last non-”Twilight” outing, “Remember Me,” Pattinson is entirely convincing as Jacob, a Cornell veterinary school student who escapes from the ruin provoked by his parents' untimely death by almost inadvertently joining the circus. 
 
 Due to his imagined expertise with animals, Jacob is taken under wing by the owner and ringmaster of the Benzini Bros. Circus, August (Waltz), a mercurial fellow who's brought the company a long way since he took over and rightly keeps a watchful eye on his beautiful blond wife Marlena (Witherspoon), who rides the circus' top animal attraction, a stunning white horse. 
 
 Embraced and roughly treated by turn, Jacob earns a place with the outfit due to his knowledge of animals (his father had been a vet) and his help in recruiting and training a new star, a jumbo elephant named Rosie. Something of a highbrow himself, August delights in the college boy's company but can't help but notice the growing affection between his wife and the bereaved lad. 
 
 Although there are skirmishes from time to time, it takes nearly the entire film for matters to fully come to a head and the lack of complexity, danger and underlying tension becomes all too noticeable from the mid-point onwards. Once the climax does arrive, the spectacular scene is over and done with far too quickly, giving it a borderline perfunctory feel. 
 
 Waltz, in his first big film since soaring to prominence in Inglourious Basterds, again scores strongly as a powerful middle-aged man who doesn't eliminate the snake in his grass before it's too late. As for Witherspoon, she's as fetching as ever as the platinum blonde any guy would want to catch But when August insults Marlena as being of a “common type,” it's clear Witherspoon needed to inject a bit of Jean Harlow into her characterization to emphasize the lower depths from whence she came that can never be entirely erased. Despite the hard glances and suggestion of a working class accent, Marlena is still a shade too much the lady and not enough of a dame. 
 
 Hal Holbrook does a nice job framing the tale as an elderly Jacob telling the story to a modern circus worker, although by rights he should be narrating the whole thing, not Pattinson; again, modern audience sensibilities likely came into play. 
 
 Craft contributions are excellent, notably Rodrigo Prieto's lustrous cinematography, Jack Fisk's highly realized production design and Jacqueline West's resourceful costumes. ||||| Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon star in 20th Century Fox's bigscreen adaptation of 'Water for Elephants.' 
 
 A 20th Century Fox release of a Fox 2000 Pictures presentation of a 3 Arts Entertainment/Gil Netter/Flashpoint Entertainment production in association with Dune Entertainment, Ingenious Media, Big Screen Prods. Produced by Netter, Erwin Stoff, Andrew R. Tennenbaum. Executive producer, Kevin Halloran. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Screenplay, Richard LaGravenese, based on the novel by Sara Gruen. 
 
 Marlena - Reese Witherspoon 
 
 Jacob - Robert Pattinson 
 
 August - Christoph Waltz 
 
 Charlie - Paul Schneider 
 
 Camel - Jim Norton 
 
 Old Jacob - Hal Holbrook 
 
 Kinko/Walter - Mark Povinelli 
 
 A present-day prologue finds nursing-home escapee Jacob Jankowski (played with endearing mock surliness by Hal Holbrook) reminiscing about his tenure under the big top. Taken in by a young circus worker (Paul Schneider) and then encouraged to share his story, Jacob proceeds to explain how a family tragedy on the eve of vet-school exams spared the would-be Cornell grad a predictable life, and led to his hitching a ride with the Benzini Brothers' traveling show instead. 
 
 Transitioning smoothly back to the character's spring awakening, director Francis Lawrence suggests how robust and alive Jacob's memories have remained all these years, faithfully re-creating the initial disorientation and awe the young Polish-American experienced upon first encountering the circus. Looking far more handsome than Holbrook ever did, Pattinson brings the same sullen sensitivity to 23-year-old Jacob that he has to the "Twilight" pics -- perfectly fitting for an overnight orphan so recently derailed from his intended life path. 
 
 A daisy-fresh college boy out of place among Camel (Jim Norton), Kinko (Mark Povinelli) and the other grizzled old drunks he meets aboard the Benzini Brothers boxcar, Jacob must instantly adjust to the show's elaborate caste system. The stakes, made almost instantly clear, are high: One wrong move and Jacob could be "redlighted," or thrown from the speeding train between stops. Such castoffs seldom survive, and the practice becomes an important subplot for the Depression-era story, as the show's ruthless ringleader regularly jettisons employees whose salaries he can no longer afford. 
 
 In the novel, this cruel boss is a separate character from August, the man whose porcelain-fair wife Jacob unwisely covets in the story's central love triangle. Writer Richard LaGravenese simplifies things for the sake of the film, however, eliminating Uncle Al to create a larger and more complex role for Christoph Waltz, custom tailored to the thesp's mix of menace and charm. Elegantly streamlining Jacob's immersion, LaGravenese focuses auds on his protagonist's point of view -- a strategy that comes at the expense of the book's memorable sideshow and supporting cast, while allowing us to learn the ropes and discover luminous star performer Marlena (Witherspoon, the picture of classic glamour) and her jealous husband (Waltz) through his eyes. 
 
 Whereas most contempo cinema seems to have lost the art of the character introduction, "Water for Elephants" takes care to create a certain mystique around its key personalities before revealing them onscreen, a tactic that caries through to August's game-changing acquisition of Rosie, a stubborn 73-year-old pachyderm who imbues the film with a giddy sense of wonder from the instant she appears. So intense is our connection with the creature that August's cruelty toward her becomes almost unwatchable, even though the most taxing scene is merely suggested and not seen. 
 
 Rosie also accounts for most of the pic's emotional highs, as in the story's eureka moment, which LaGravanese cleverly reconfigures to tie in with an otherwise underdeveloped subplot about the paralysis-inducing consequences of drinking contaminated Jamaican ginger extract, or "Jake." Set against the dual backdrops of the Great Depression and Prohibition, "Water for Elephants" plunges us full-bodied into the world of circus troupes, an all-but-lost slice of recent history ripe for such a spectacular reimagining. 
 
 It's an intoxicating place to be, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's breathless dark-carnival tale "Something Wicked This Way Comes." Considering the unassuming roots of the book on which "Water for Elephants" is based, along with its misfit-focused subject, there's no small irony that the pic should attract such a first-choice roster of collaborators: From dream-cast headliners Pattinson, Witherspoon and Waltz all the way down the line to d.p. Roberto Prieto, composer James Newton Howard (whose rich orchestral score sadly lacks a clear theme) and production designer Jack Fisk, the show is strictly A-list. 
 
 Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen), Rodrigo Prieto; editor, Alan Edward Bell; music, James Newton Howard; music supervisor, Alexandra Patsavas; production designer, Jack Fisk; art director, David Crank; set designer, Kristen Davis; set decorator, Jim Erickson; costume designer, Jacqueline West; sound (SDDS), Jose Antonio Garcia; sound designer, Jeremy Pierson; supervising sound editors, Skip Lievsay, Jeremy Pierson; re-recording mixers, Lievsay, Pierson; stunt coordinator, Chris O'Hara; special effects supervisor, Mark R. Byers; visual effects supervisor, Paul Graff; visual effects, Crazy Horse Effects, Filaments Visual Effects, BOT, Factory, Shade; head animal trainer/animal wrangler, Steve Martin; assistant director, Lars P. Winther; casting, Denise Chamian. Reviewed at Fox studios, April 20, 2011. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 120 MIN. 
 
 With: Richard Brake, Stephen Monroe Taylor, Ken Foree, Scott MacDonald, James Frain, Sam Anderson, John Aylward, Brad Greenquist, Tim Guinee. (English, Polish dialogue) 
 
 The wild card here is Lawrence, who ably rises to the challenge. Despite his flashy musicvideo origins, the helmer takes an assured classical approach to his widescreen canvas, transitioning smoothly from future-looking sci-fiers "Constantine" and "I Am Legend" to this project's more nostalgia-driven demands.
– Water for Elephants, based on the bestselling book, tells the story of a young man who joins the circus during the Depression, working with an elephant and falling for a married performer. Critics are mixed: The film “provides a constant wash of scenic pleasure,” and is true to the book, writes Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter. “But the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen is missing.” Roger Ebert welcomes the film. “In an age of prefabricated special effects and obviously phony spectacle, it's sort of old-fashioned (and a pleasure) to see a movie made of real people and plausible sets,” he notes in the Chicago Sun-Times. Writing in Variety, Peter Debruge cheers the movie. It’s “a splendid period swooner that delivers classic romance and an indelible insider's view of 1930s circus life.” But in the New York Times, Stephen Holden strongly disagrees. The “timid screen adaptation,” he writes, “short-circuits the novel’s quirky charms and period atmosphere by its squeamish attitude toward gritty circus life.”