So, am curious, what are your WORST film/book adaptations?

Anyone seen The Valley of the Dolls - is it any good?

Pride and Prejudice with keira Knightley - the film is pretty annoying but I was thinking about giving Matthew Macfadyen a whirl one day- UNTIL I watched the alternative American ending in the 'extras'- this is so stunningly vomit-inducingly awful that it may become my favourite all time movie moment - its absolutley priceless! What was Deborah Moggagh thinking of??

No way Grey - half of Mumsnet were in love with Jondalar during their teens, just thankful that The Valley of the Horses never made it to the big screen.

I remember when CotCB was released on video, I BEGGED my Mum to hire it, so, so bad.

I was just about to say clan of the cave bear - thinking no one else would have heard of it!!!!!!11

Cornish, Daryl Hannah was an apaulling choice!

Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood - loved the book, the film was utter shite.

The Clan of The Cave Bear (the only half decent book in a series which turned into soft porn very quickly) with Daryl Hannah. Dear Lord - wrong, wrong so badly wrong.

TV seems to be worse than film, budget constraints I guess - Neverwhere, not great, Skallagrig - what were you thinking BBC?!

Olihan- totally agree there about The other Boylen Girl. Terrible film. The BBC adaptation a few years previously was much better though.

Also hated the film Girl with a Pearl Earring- maybe they need to stop taking books I love and putting Scarlett Johannsen in the lead. I have liked her in films where I haven't read the book funnily enough.

And A Prayer For Owen Meaney, one of my all-time favourite books, by the not-always-reliable-but-when-he's-good-he's-good John Irving. Bad, bad movie. Humph!

That said, I thought The World According to Garp (another John Irving) starring Robin Williams, was very good.

yeah the beach the book was great fun and really rather creepy at the same time, whereas the film was leo di-c and a bunch of gap year kids destroying an ecosystem (literally, i believe).

hitchhiker the book was just a shadow of hitchhiker the radio series anyway so can't say i ever had any expectations for the film.

I wish! [waves to Spiral, all the while laughing hollowly]

The Other Bolyen Girl was unbelieveably awful. Ridiculous casting - Henry VIII wasn't dark haired and brroding FFS, they jiggled about with the order of events so it made no sense and tried to condense FAR too big a story into a 90 minute film.

It was shite.

English history rewritten for Americans .

Kiwi - least venting about films stops us from stressing about other things eh?

Balloonslayer, I couldn't agree with you more about the pathetically wet and NOT golden good looking Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes. What a crime against casting!

And I've very surprised that no one's mentioned the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy yet - what a travesty! Marvin the Manically Depressed Robot white, cute and round? No, no, no!!! And don't get me started on the abomination that was the Americanisation and Wimmin's Lib banshee that was Trillian. Grrrrr!

[Kiwikat slaps self in face - calm down dear, it's just a movie! Slinks shame-facedly from the room]

she is really bad

Another vote for the Keira Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice. Dreadful!

And as much as I love the film of Little Shop of Horrors they gave it the Hollywood happy ending rather than sticking with the original much darker stage show ending. Still a fab film though. I forgive them.

The DaVinci Code- utter tripe as a film.

the unbearable lightness of being - milan kundera was made into soft porn which made me indignant

Seconding Bran with Pride & Prejudice with Keira Knightly I was shouting at the cinema screen. Know several other people who did the same. I was with a Dutch friend who didn't know the book who loved the film so I frogmarched her to Smiths afterwards to get the book and the BBC most recent adaptation.

Angels And Demons made me verrrr cross!

Latest Harry Potter movie is just awful. Really have enjoyed the others and must confess am still working my way through the books (door steps). Does this count?

Surely the book can't be that bad can it?

Twilight. I love the book but the fim was sold as the 'teen romance very serious' crap. Books not really like that at all. They also missed out large parts of the story so the film made no sense and at no point did I feel that Bella and Edward were in love.

I also saw an interview with Robert Patterson in which he says he has not read the book! I'm not entirely sure that boy has a brain though, I guess he doesn't need one if he's that pretty.

I've just looked Hoffman up on IMDB and I recognise him (didn't know his name). He would have been perfect. Spacey is a good actor but he's very neatly formed and well-balanced, just putting him in a bulky aran jumper does not transform him into a large, clumsy man.

Bran - Gerard Depardieu is of the same ilk as Phillip Seymour Hoffman so I think we are thinking of the same "type" of actor (and of course I meant potato-skinned not potatoe

Hated The Dark is rising - but at least I'd heard before seeing the film what it would be like,so I was prepared for the worst..

My other pet annoyance is The L Shaped Room - ongoing plot building up to the heroine giving birth to a boy at the end,all significant.So in the film,she has a girl. Why? Why change it??

Dune is one of my favorite films though..

Reading a birth announcement on here today by someone who had called their son Roscoe, brought to mind the wonderful (yet disturbing) book "The Choirboys."

This was infamously made into a film which the author of the book, Joseph Wambaugh, loudly disowned.

It had a Happy Ending. FFS.

Anyone else read it?

Why do movie producers make films of books which are a) difficult to film anyway due to the style/structure and b)have a depressing ending when they want to make a film with a happy ending,