BEFORE: Reese Witherspoon carries over from "This Means War" - this was another last-minute addition to the list as a substitution.
THE PLOT: A veterinary student abandons his studies after his parents are killed and joins a traveling circus as their vet.
AFTER: Maybe this is just the time of year I start getting cynical about romance, at least movie-based ones, but I wasn't really feeling this one. The connection between the two leads just felt really phony, or perhaps non-existent. It might be because Robert Pattinson has that sort of dead expression all the time, which is the same reason people got creeped out by the characters in "The Polar Express" who never blinked. It makes him an ideal choice to play a vampire, but not a living human character. And congratulations to me for never including the "Twilight" films in my project.
The circus is supposed to be a place of merriment and wonder, if you can learn to ignore animal abuse, anyway. But by showing the dark side of roustabouts and side-shows, in addition to inhumane treatments of both animal acts and carnies, this film really takes the fun out of it. There's exactly one montage of lion tamers, clowns, acrobats and such, and that's it - back to reality.
So congratulations (?) on making the circus boring, and in fact for making illicit romance boring too. Really, at its core, it's just "Titanic" minus the boat and the iceberg, plus a circus.
The one thing I drew from the film was a sort of connection to my work in the animation industry, which is a different kind of circus altogether. The organization depicted here is a sort of mid-level non-Ringling Brothers outfit, and that's sort of where I find myself, working for companies that produce solid work, but will never be on a level with Disney, Dreamworks, etc. I often equate them to minor-league baseball teams, which suits me fine.
Some players spend their whole careers in the minors and never make it to "the show", but that doesn't mean I'm unhappy. I get to play "baseball" every day, which is far better than not playing. The audiences may be smaller, but we still try to put on a good show. And the individual players still swing for the fences, which is also a good thing. But it can be a wearying experience.
Also starring Christoph Waltz (last seen in "The Three Musketeers"), Hal Holbrook (last seen in "The Star Chamber"), Paul Schneider.
RATING: 4 out of 10 buckets of fish
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