Step right up, see the logic-defying movie!

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This article was published 04/11/2011 (5060 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Growing up with an elephant for a best friend would be great. She’d never beat you at hide-and-seek. She’d scare away bullies. And she’d never forget your birthday.

One can see how this film would be an easy sell. Sophie, played by Brittany Bristow, a Toronto actor and graduate of the National Ballet School, is an aspiring dancer whose best pal is a pachyderm named Sheba.

They make a cute couple: the ballerina and the gentle giant. Their interactions are fun to watch. For instance, Sheba will hug Sophie with her trunk and lift her off of her toes. Unfortunately, most of the film is focused on Sophie making other friends. (The film is, tellingly, called Sophie, not Sheba.)

Before the opening credits have finished, Sophie discovers that her parents, who are struggling to manage their zoo and pay for her ballet schooling, have sold Sheba to a circus without telling her. Perhaps they were hoping their daughter wouldn’t notice that the five-ton animal was missing.

“I know this is hard for you, but you have to let Sheba go,” Sophie’s father says, as if he’s talking about her favourite blanket.

Sophie approaches the circus owner, Alistair Winston, (acclaimed British actor John Rhys-Davies) for a job. Rhys-Davies leads an admirable cast, but the actors are caged by a lacklustre script.

German actor Thure Riefenstein plays an animal trainer, Magnus, whose wife died in an elephant accident (this makes things especially awkward between him and Sheba).

“What is your business, Animal Abuse Incorporated?” Sophie quips upon meeting him. Deborah Kara Unger is a television reporter who suggests to Sophie that she should return Sheba to Africa. And Augustus Prew is Blake, a former aerial artist who is traumatized after dropping his partner, Natalia (Smallville‘s Erica Durance).

“Were you a jerk before the accident, too?” Sophie tells a surly Blake.

Antagonizing someone often leads to romance, in kindergarten at least (which is the average age of this film’s audience member), so Blake takes a shine to Sophie, describing her as “a bit weird, hardworking, tough, funny, sweet.”

“I sound like a Chinese dish,” Sophie retorts.

Executive producer, co-writer and director Leif Bristow (Brittany’s real-life father) has given the film a made-for-family-TV quality with an upbeat, pop-laden soundtrack, dance montages and corny jokes. (Highlights of the film’s humour include an elephant fart gag and the shushing of a ventriloquist’s dummy.)

Circus life sweeps Sophie away, threatening to derail her plan of freeing Sheba.

But filmgoers will not be swept away. Normally a place of awe, this circus is kind of dull, lacking believable tension or drama. Watching the film’s climax and conclusion is akin to seeing some circus acts — not because it’s amazing, but because everyone’s actions defy logic.

— Postmedia News

 

Other Voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of Sophie:

 

Another great cast, another crappy script, another Canadian dud.

— Susan G. Cole, Now magazine

Yes, this is “family entertainment,” a label that speaks to the fond hope that someone in the family will actually find it entertaining.

— Rick Groen, Globe and Mail

 

The timing couldn’t be worse for a film about a private family owned wild animal preserve, considering the recent horrors in Ohio.

— Anne Brodie, Metro

 

I tried my damnedest to find something nice to say about Sophie, some sort of reason for it existing, or some sort of redeeming feature. All I came up with is this: “Looking past the atrocious, expository dialogue, porn-quality performances and incompetent direction, Sophie does seem somewhat sincere…”

— Robert Bell, Exclaim.ca

 

Compiled by Shane Minkin