Story
Life of Pi, based on the best-selling novel by Yann Martel, is presented as a series of flashbacks that tell the story of Pacine ‘Pi’ Patel (Suraj Sharma).
As a young boy, Pi (Avush Tandon) lives with his family in a zoo in Pondicherry, India. He’s precocious and curious about God and religion. He develops his own hybrid religion based on the Hindu, Christian and Muslim faiths. As a teenager, Pi (Suraj Sharma) is content with his life. This changes when Pi’s father Santosh (Adil Hussain) announces that he intends to sell all the zoo animals and use the proceeds to relocate the family to Canada.
Together with the zoo animals, Pi and his family are packed aboard a giant freighter headed for Canada, but disaster strikes when a violent storm sinks the ship. Pi survives and is set adrift in a lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a vicious hyena, a female orang-utan and a wild Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The survivors fight each other to survive until only Pi and Richard Parker are left alive. As the days, weeks and months go by, Pi is witness to amazing events at sea and has fantastic adventures. Meanwhile Richard Parker gives Pi the will to survive as Pi is forced to share the lifeboat and find food for himself and Richard Parker.
Themes
Shipwreck; loss of family; survival; murder; cannibalism
Violence
This movie has some violence, much of it involving animals, and also some blood and gore. For example:
Sexual references
None of concern
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
This movie shows some use of substances. For example, while aboard an ocean-going freighter, a man feeds zoo animals tranquilizers hidden in bananas. This is to ease their sea sickness.
Nudity and sexual activity
This movie has some nudity and sexual activity. For example:
- There is some very mild verbal flirting between a teenage Pi and a teenage girl.
- People wear brief swimwear.
- When he’s trying to train the tiger and mark his own territory, Pi wees on the canvas covering the lifeboat. Immediately afterwards, the tiger walks up to Pi, turns its back on him and sprays wee in his face.
Product placement
None of concern
Coarse language
This movie has some infrequent low-level coarse language.
Ideas to discuss with your children
Life of Pi is a magical and emotionally powerful drama. The movie is visually beautiful and its effects are enhanced in 3D. It’s about faith, friendship and perseverance, and is targeted at teenagers and adults. You should be aware that it does have emotionally upsetting themes and some scary and disturbing scenes. For this reason, it isn’t recommended for children under 12, and parental guidance is strongly recommended for younger teenagers.
The main messages from this movie are about how people are capable both of great self-sacrifice and friendship as well great evil when they’re pushed to the limits of endurance and perseverance.
Values in this movie that you could reinforce with your children include perseverance, resilience, inventiveness and self-sacrifice. For example, throughout the movie, Pi shows these qualities in the way he survives hardships and provides for both himself and the tiger Richard Parker. Pi repeatedly shows self-sacrifice by sharing the limited space on the lifeboat with Richard Parker to save Richard Parker’s life.
You could talk with your children about why Pi invented a fantastic tale of magic and beauty rather than telling the terrible and horrible truth. You could ask which story people would find easier to believe and why.