So I did. It had gorgeous cinematography, but its efforts to anthropomorphize the animals was unsettling, to say the least.
I know, it is "just a movie". And the visuals were striking. But the portrayal was something else altogether.
I didn't like that. But I can see a lot of people watching that, and thinking Elephants were the gentlest, most non-offensive creatures there are.
I guess the one about the Grizzly family would have really got me going.
A lot of people didn't care for the movie "Life of Pi", but I enjoyed the visuals enough to buy the 3-D version, which is pretty wild to watch. I understand fully why some don't care for it, but I liked it.
There is a scene in the movie where the young boy wants to make friends with the new tiger (named...Richard Parker") that came into the zoo owned and run by his father.
So he gets into the set up they use to get the tiger out of the cage for vet visits or if they are going to move it, and the boy is separated by prison bars from where the tiger can enter.
The boy gets some chunks of raw meat and when the tiger enters, he grabs a chunk of raw, bloody meat and holds it out, his arm extended between the bars, offering it to the tiger while he speaks gentle words of friendship and good will. The tiger advances slowly, smelling in that weird way cats do, with their mouth partially open.
At that point, the kid's father walks in and sees this, and screams...the tiger snarls and runs at top speed in the opposite direction, bouncing of the narrow walls, and disappears back into the pen.
The dialog went something like this:
FATHER: (screaming) What are you thinking?! Are you out of your mind? Who gave you permission to come back here? You have just ignored everything I have ever taught you
PI: I just wanted to say 'Hello' to him.
FATHER: You think that tiger is your friend. He is an animal, not a playmate!
PI: Animals have souls. I've seen it in their eyes.
FATHER: Animals don't think like we do; people who forget that get themselves killed. That tiger is not your friend. When you look into his eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you - nothing else.
At this point, he has an assistant tether a goat to the iron bars with a rope, and when the goat starts bleating, the tiger slowly enters the enclosure, and comes to within maybe 20 or thirty feet then, it covers the distance in the blink of an eye (and faster than any young boy could have ever retracted his arm) and grabs the goat and impossibly pulls it through the bars.
Here is a link to the scene if you have never seen it; it is pretty powerful: Life of Pi Goat Scene