Book vs. Movie

A couple days ago I unfortunately watched Rules of Attraction starring none-other than James Freakin’ Van Der Beek. I only watched it because I read the book about a month ago and found it very entertaining so I was curious if the movie was decent. I was especially interested because Bret Easton Ellis also wrote American Psycho which is one of my favorite movies. Whomever he sold Rules of Attraction to did not do the book any justice. They took a very dark, disturbing, funny book and turned it into a superficial quasi-RomCom starring Dawson. 

I understand that many movies differ from the book, but this movie was missing major plot points and then just completely changed others (e.g. the female lead is super slutty in the book yet in the movie they make her a virgin, or the two male leads have a romantic relationship while in the movie they barely say 5 words to each other). At times I realized that if I had never read the book I would have no idea what was even going on in the movie or what they meant to imply. For example, Paul and Mitch are making small talk over a keg and Mitch blurts out, “I warned you, don’t say I didn’t warn you” and walks away. End scene. The viewer has no idea what on earth Mitch warned Paul about. In the book when this happens, it’s in reference to the two of them having a prior sexual relationship and Mitch warning Paul that he’s not for real gay and so Paul shouldn’t have been surprised when he ended things to get with a girl. In the movie nothing else is said, it’s never referenced again or ever explained. Anyway the movie is awful but it got me thinking about other books vs. movies.  I think it’s generally agreed upon that the book is always better, but some movies out there put up a good fight.

The Movie Blows:

-          Rules of Attraction Already discussed above. Boom. Roasted.

-          Choke  One of my favorite books ever but the movie was pretty worthless other than Sam Rockwell is awesome. As with Rules of Attraction, it’s hard to get all the complexity of the book into the movie so while I could appreciate some clever dialogue, etc. I would imagine it would be lost on someone who hasn’t read the book and doesn’t have the appropriate background info.

-          The Da Vinci Code  Not really one of my favorite books either but a good poolside read. It’s hard to enjoy the movie because it’s pretty much impossible to get past Tom Hanks’ hair.  

-          Something Borrowed  Not my typical kind of book but it was very enjoyable for a plane ride. And I’m cheating because I haven’t even seen the movie -- but I can absolutely guarantee it’s terrible. And this review I came across really made me laugh “The film seems to think that we will find something entertaining about Darcy just because she's played by Kate Hudson. It's hard to imagine a worse miscalculation.”  (Snider, Eric. Review from Film.com)

The Movie Is Decent

-          The Road  The first Cormac McCarthy book I read and I couldn't put it down. Viggo Mortensen was great but overall the movie was just ok. It’s hard to capture McCarthy’s amazingly disturbing imagery and the movie didn’t quite get there.

-          Where the Wild Things Are  I know a lot of people who loved the movie but I just wasn’t feeling it that much. Visually it was beautiful but overall I found it pretty boring. For most of the movie the people and beasts took turns getting their feelings hurt, beating the crap out of each other, and then everyone just loved each other again without really learning any lessons (which I feel should happen considering it’s based on a children’s book).

-          Marley & Me  Chosen as Walker Family Christmas Day Movie '08. Both the book and movie were cute but nothing life-changing. I didn’t think I was that in to either one until the end of both when I was bawling and realized I really cared about that damn dog. Can’t go wrong with a good dog story J

Both the Book and Movie Are Awesome

-          No Country for Old Men  I actually am in the middle of reading this book but it’s fantastic so far. This is one of the rare occasions where I’ve seen the movie first. Usually I hate this because then you already have a picture of the characters and don’t get to use your imagination but I think the movie did such a stellar casting job that I don’t mind. I highly recommend both the book and the movie.

-          The Shining  The first Stephen King book I ever read and obviously after that I was hooked. I think I saw the movie in like 6^th or 7^th grade and was terrified! The blood flowing from the elevator and the creepy twin girls were captured really well and for sure gave me nightmares. If you can stand looking at Shelley Duval’s droop-face for 2 hours, you can really appreciate Jack Nicholson’s unparalleled brand of crazy.

-          Fight Club  Not my favorite Palahniuk book but definitely a unique, dark, and hysterical read (in typical Palahniuk fashion). I was so impressed with how well the movie was done. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton made a great team. The movie managed to stay really true to the book and I loved how many word for word dialogues took place in the movie. Crap, I forgot that the first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

There are so many more examples but these are the ones I could think of off the top of my head. I read a lot but I don’t really watch that many movies so, even though my opinions are correct and awesome, I’m probably not the best person to be writing on this topic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the books you’ve read versus their movie adaptation!