REVIEW: Water for Elephants Stars One Very Big Heartthrob, with Wrinkled Skin

The movie's actual stars deserve that too, and Prieto and Lawrence don't skimp on them. If anything, their visual approach serves as a kind of Spackle, filling in some of the cracks left by a few of the performers. OK, by one performer: Pattinson isn't a great actor; maybe we've seen enough of him to surmise that he may never even be a good one. But at least the camera loves him, even if it doesn't know quite what to do with him. Pattinson's detractors may write him off as just being pretty, but his features are too odd for mere prettiness: With his wide-set eyes and narrow slit of a smile, he's like an Amphibian god. He's good at radiating lovesickness -- he's had lots of practice in those Twilight movies -- but less believable when it comes to throwing off sparks of righteous rage or thwarted passion.

And he doesn't quite connect with Witherspoon, though that may not be wholly his fault. She can be a wonderful actress, but when it comes to sharing the screen with her, I suspect she's a tough nut to crack. In Water for Elephants, her hair is Harlow gold, but she doesn't have Bette Davis eyes: They're small and glittery to the point of being calculating, even hard. That look works well for the character, a former opportunist who suddenly wakes up to the possibility of love. But Witherspoon's Marlena doesn't melt easily, and when she does give in to romance, you can almost see her grudging reluctance in the set of her sharp little jaw.

Still, Witherspoon is something to watch, strutting her stuff in a selection of period-perfect outfits including daytime pajama-pants and silky, nighttime kimonos. (The costume designer is Jacqueline West.) More predictable, and a lot less fun, is Hal Holbrook, appearing in the story's unnecessary framing device as the aged Jacob: He acts grumpy at first and then twinkles madly, as if on cue. Waltz gives the movie's finest and subtlest human performance: His cruel, self-centered August is all the more terrifying for the way he lets the occasional flash of self-doubt break through. He's more unsettling in this role than he was in his breakthrough movie, Inglourious Basterds, which at least allowed him the safety valve of black humor.

As a director, Lawrence loves the big canvas -- he seems to thrive on having a wide-open expanse of screen to play with, and you see it in the movie's climax, a jumble-sale symphony of orchestrated chaos. Lawrence's last movie was the 2007 I Am Legend, a strange hybrid picture that was two-thirds haunting, one-third pack-'em-in crowd-pleaser. I've completely forgotten the throwaway, seemingly tacked-on ending of I Am Legend. But I'll never forget the movie's stirring depiction of a futuristic New York overrun not just with zombies but with all sorts of wildlife, including deer who restake their claim on the land with a clatter of hoofs.

I also can't forget Will Smith's -- and the movie's -- connection with the German shepherd who figures so prominently in the story. (In one sequence, Smith gives the dog a sudsy bath, singing a Bob Marley tune as he soaps her ears; temporarily safe from the horde of zombies raging outdoors, they're reclaiming a bit of civilization for themselves.) With Water for Elephants, Lawrence has moved on to much bigger beasts. His Rosie -- she's played by an elephant-actor named Tai -- is enigmatic, essentially unknowable. Lawrence and Prieto don't indulge in a lot of loving close-ups of her face. Rosie's beauty, and her star presence, is all in her girth: You've got to love all of her to love her at all.

And she isn't immediately beautiful, at least not in the strict sense of the word. Her skin is speckled and gray and crepey, as if she'd suddenly decided to sunbathe in the desert after soaking for days in a brine bath. But her lumbering gait is its own kind of ballet; her translucent ears are giant sunlight receptors. She's a big girl in a big movie, and fittingly, it's she who gives Pattinson his best moment: When August first acquires Rosie, and the doors of a big barnlike structure swing open to reveal her in all her wrinkled glory, Pattinson's Jacob takes one look at her and laughs -- from the inside, not just on the surface. Pattinson's shortcomings as an actor are many. But he knows what to do in the presence of a heffalump goddess.

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