Water For Elephants

In the depression era years, Jacob (Robert Pattison) gets some terrible news while attending Cornell, both of his parents are killed and were heavily in debt, so Jacob ends up running away.  His life forever changes when he hops onboard a train, and finds himself part of a circus crew.  He is met by carny folks, some take a liking to him, others don't.  He earns his way onto the crew, and when the star attraction has an animal go down, his schooling in Vet sciences helps him offer advice to animal care.  August (Christop Waltz) runs the Benzini circus show, and he is always under a lot of pressure to keep it going, at the expense of feeding spoiled food to the animals, discarding people in the middle of the night when it gets really tough.  Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) is his young wife whose act is the main attraction of the show, and Jacob's presence creates some tension between her and August, who is also a jealous man who brooks no disloyalty. 

Soon, the main act needs to be retooled, and August goes all-in with the acquisition of an elephant, and Jacob becomes the handler for the elephant, and it's tough going in the beginning, with August using a hook tool to bludgeon and coerce the large animal to act properly, but eventually they figure it out, and things take an upturn for the circus, but the culmination of August's actions have dire consequences. 

The Jacob-Marlena subplot never really gets beyond the simmer point, it never takes root to anchor character motivations, so the romantic/dramatic tension of the film is sorely undercut.  This keeps the overall arc of the love triangle at arm's distance for the viewer, and becomes fairly uninteresting as a star-crossed romance with the backdrop of a travelling circus.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.