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. 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. 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.
– 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.”