Poster © 20th Century Fox. Shown at reduced size for review and commentary.
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GenreAdventure, Drama & Family
RatedPG
Runtime2 hr 7 mins
ReleasedNovember 21, 2012
StreamingSee Where to Watch
DirectorAng Lee
StarringSuraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Tabu
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Life of Pi (2012)
| ▶Stream It | ★The Numbers |
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| iIMDb Profile | %Rotten Tomatoes |
| WWikipedia | LLetterboxd |
| TTMDB | +Add to Top 8 |
| Life of Pi's Details | |
| Genre | Adventure, Drama & Family |
| Rated | PG |
| Released | 09/28/2012 (NYFF); 11/21/2012 (United States) |
| Streaming | See Where to Watch on this page. |
| Running Time | 2 hr 7 mins |
| Budget | $120M (reported) |
| Box Office | Updated daily from Box Office Mojo. See the numbers below. |
| Based On | Life of Pi by Yann Martel |
| Country | United States, United Kingdom, Taiwan |
| Language | English |
| Life of Pi's Interests | |
| General | Lifeboats, flying fish, survival manuals, glowing jellyfish, zoo life, three religions at once. |
| Music | Mychael Danna, blending Indian melodies with the sound of wide open water. |
| Movies | Cast Away (2000). Another castaway, much smaller companion. |
| Television | Planet Earth. Same jaw-dropping animals, nobody stuck on a boat with them. |
| Heroes | Richard Parker. All stripes, zero gratitude. |
| Life of Pi's Crew | |
| Director | Ang Lee |
| Writers | David Magee |
| Producers | Gil Netter, Ang Lee, David Womark |
| Cinematography | Claudio Miranda |
| Music | Mychael Danna |
| Edited By | Tim Squyres |
| Production | Fox 2000 Pictures, Dune Entertainment, Ingenious Media, Haishang Films |
| Distributed By | 20th Century Fox |
Rafe Spall spends most of Life of Pi in a cozy Montreal kitchen, nodding like a podcast host, and every cut back to him lets the air out of the movie. You want the ocean. The ocean is where Ang Lee goes full wizard. A teenager, a lifeboat and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and the tiger somehow gives the best performance in a movie full of people. Suraj Sharma carries nearly the whole thing alone with a raft, a rope and a face full of panic, and he never once feels like a kid acting. The glowing jellyfish night and the big storm look like a screensaver from heaven. It pulled $609 million worldwide on a reported $120M budget, so people showed up for exactly that. An 8.1 because the boat half is a masterpiece and the kitchen half is a book club. $228 says you give your next pet a first and last name and the vet asks why.
What works: The ocean half: the storm, the glowing night sea and a tiger that feels completely real, with Suraj Sharma holding it all together almost alone.
What doesn’t: The present-day frame story with the writer is flat and talky, and it keeps pulling you off the boat right when the movie is cooking.
Who it’s for: People who want a big-screen spectacle that also leaves them arguing about faith on the drive home.
Spoilers
Pi tells the Japanese investigators a second version of the voyage with no animals, where the zebra, the hyena and the orangutan were people and the tiger was Pi himself. He asks the writer which story he prefers, and the writer picks the one with the tiger.
A writer (Rafe Spall) in Montreal hears about a man with a story that might make him believe in God, so he goes to meet the grown-up Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan). Pi starts at the beginning: a childhood in Pondicherry, India, where his family runs a zoo and a Bengal tiger goes by the human name Richard Parker. In 1977 the family loads up the animals and sails for Canada on a Japanese cargo ship. A storm hits. Teenage Pi (Suraj Sharma) ends up on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific, and he is not alone. Ang Lee directs. One hundred twenty-seven minutes, one very hungry roommate.
Anyone with a raft, a whistle and a lot of patience. Feeding the tiger is your job now.
| Suraj Sharma | Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel |
| Tabu | Gita Patel |
| Rafe Spall | The Writer |
| Gérard Depardieu | the Cook |
| Adil Hussain | Santosh Patel |
| Vibish Sivakumar | Ravi |
| Andrea Di Stefano | the Priest |
| Shravanthi Sainath | Anandi |
| Mythili Prakash | Pi's wife |
| Raj Patel | Ravi Patel |
| Hadiqa Hamid | Adita Patel |
| Elie Alouf | Francis "Mamaji" Adirubasamy |
| T. M. Karthik | Science Teacher |
| Amarendran Ramanan | Indian History Teacher |
| Wang Po-chieh | Buddhist Sailor |
| Jag Huang | Sailor |
- (cur | prev) 14:30, 17 October 2026 DataBot +120 Numbers refreshed: Rotten Tomatoes 86%; Rotten Tomatoes critics 86% (253 reviews); movie.guru score 8.5 → 8.4.
- (cur | prev) 12:00, 17 October 2026 DataBot +2,000 Profile created from Wikipedia and Box Office Mojo: cast, crew, release dates, budget, official trailer.