The CGI looks worse than in "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" from a hundred years ago
Here is a sample that intends to showcase how good the CGI is:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VTEn1JGu-Tk
Yes the resolution is higher than PlayStation video games, higher than my TV in fact, a lot of good that does. If you pause on any single frame, I'm sure it looks like a photorealistic tiger. This is what people always say to do. I say push play and take the video off pause, as if you're actually watching the movie. Watch it in 360p even. Give Ang Lee's super-computer every benefit of the doubt in case there is any accidental pixelation of a whisker somewhere. We're not looking for that. We're watching a motion picture. And the motion is all wrong.
If you've seen the Spider-Man movies, where Spider-Man is flying around skyscapers with the Green Goblin, you've probably noticed that it looks a bit like Power Rangers. The characters have big bobble heads, and they are whipping around corners and the camera is too, and it looks like a comic book come to life. It's stylized. It's not reality. It's meant to have a cartoonish look, and in a way we expect that because it goes with the territory. Then there's disaster movies like a Titanic, where CGI is intertwined with physical models in order to try and disguise it. You can usually still spot the CGI. Humans are extremely good at catching when something is off, even just a little, even with inanimate objects. We know how things move. We know the laws of physics. Stop-motion effect are actually very frightening because of this.
Life of Pi breaks all the rules, and has the pomposity to have a live animal strutting front and center, with the same jerky frenetic motion as the stylized Green Goblin, with none of the hinting or subtlety of Titanic. Everything lies bare in full view. And it looks awful. Every one frame to the next is wrong and betrays our senses. Ang Lee didn't know this because he needs glasses and to wipe the gay semen out of his eyes. He should have won the Razzie.