For a few seconds there I was ready to give Water for Elephants one of those elusive five-star ratings.
Its eventual four from me is a long story - which the movie has also been criticised for being.
Maybe it's to do with the time of day you see it or where
in the cinema you sit because none of the reviews I've read or seen on the telly match my experience.
In this Depression-era tale, Robert Pattinson takes a break from being a vampire and Reese Witherspoon from cheesy rom-coms like Four Holidays and Legally Blonde.
Jacob (Pattinson) is a veterinary student who receives news during his final exam that his parents have been killed in a car accident.
Penniless, he packs what he has in a suitcase and leaps into a train carriage, only to wake the next morning and discover he has unwittingly joined the circus. Marlena (Witherspoon) is the circus-owner's wife who is equal parts beautiful and dissatisfied with the man she has ended up with.
A horseback acrobat, she's as sweet on animals as Jacob, who finds himself as the circus' trusted vet.
Rosie the elephant is the other star of this show and, like the circus travellers, takes a fearsome beating from the circus owner, August.
Not beyond throwing his staff from the moving train when he can't afford their wages, August (Christoph Waltz) is never far from a tipple and grows increasingly jealous of his wife's lingering eyes for Jacob.
Water For Elephants' frights, romance and glamour held me for its duration and its beautiful lighting and costuming has me considering going back for seconds.
So for that brief moment - between the credits starting to roll and turning to my movie-watching buddy - I thought it would be getting five stars from me. But my mate didn't feel the same. "Wasn't that just a poor man's Titanic?" he said.
It starts and ends with an aged Jacob recalling his youth, and the story is one of inter-class love, so it does seem awfully similar.
But I still loved it.
(M), 135 minutes
4/5
