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

I was very disappointed with the TV series of Cadfael.
Not with Derek Jacobi who was, as always, wonderful, but with the way they mangled the stories and the portrayal of Hugh Beringar.

Pride and Prejudice with Kiera Knightly made me scream at the tv.

I wasn't keen on the book of The Shipping News so I didn't bother with the film, but I did think that Spacey was an odd choice. In my mind when I read the book the character looked a bit like Gerard Depardieu.

Dune. Surely the worst adaption ever.

Second The Handmaid's Tale.

The hell that was Nicholas Cage in Captain Corelli's Mandolin. It made me want to claw my eyes out. .

Let the Right One In... very deep dark story. Film was truely dire.

Teadrinker, definitely agree about Shipping News - Kevin Spacey was just soooo wrong. I think Philip Seymour Hoffman would have been brilliant in that role (socially awkward, potatoe-skinned, huge and bumbling etc.) The book was such a fantastic read.

Nah, BS, I didn't think she was pretty at all.... she was a right minger... But I loved her anyway!!

Bettymum agree - The English Patient is about the only film that beats the book. I loved the book but the film was somehow more engaging.

The Black Dahlia
Jumper (the book is fab, film has been all but re-written)

Puppymonkey, I remember that one. I still thought she was too pretty but I agree it was the best adaptation I've seen. I thought it was really sexy - it's a very sexy book (in a frustrated virgin spinster sort of way) isn't it?

Persuasion with Rupert Penry-Jones was shite.

The one with Ciaran Hinds though was brillant, just how i imagined it in my head.

in fact any recent adaptation of Austen is shit, Mansfeild Park, P&P, Northanger Abbey are just a few i can think of.

Balloonslayer, the last BBC adaptation of jane Eyre was absolutely FAB imho. The definitive adaptation.

It's Wuthering Heights no-one can get right. So maybe the ITv version coming on this weekend will change my mind...????

Oh! OK - was going to see if I could get it second hand on Amazon but maybe I won't

Bettymum - don't read the book if you love the film! It'll ruin it for you!

Just looked it up teadrinker, and Zelah Clark looks rather lovely on the DVD cover. And I notice that Blanche Ingram was played by Mary Tamm (who I remember from Dr Who ). She wasn't head-and-shoulders ahead of Zelah Clark in the looks dept.

I am droning on.

Continuing to drone however, on the same subject, I was always disappointed in Gone with the Wind. It's such a fab book, but I hated that they missed out two of Scarlett's children in the film. Lack of time, I guess. But the Jane Eyre principle again is the big one... the whole point is that Ashley is supposed to be a PITA but gorgeous. Scarlett's shallowness is totally taken in by his looks, and she fails to see that the less attractive Rhett Butler is completely her type. That is what the whole book revolves around - her not seeing what all the readers can see. By casting Leslie Bloody Howard, the whole thing is ruined. IMO.

Not a major movie, but The Handmaid's Tale. Such a brilliant book - had a huge impact on my teens and my desire to read - and such a let-down of a film

ah balloonslayer yes

ditto Jane Austen adaptations

Fanny Price is a mouse not Billy Frickin Piper

Edmund in Sense and Sensibility was not eyewateringly gorgeous and never chopped wood

wtf was Mr Darcy doing in a bloody pond?

etc

The Shipping News - very disappointing as was excellent book. I'm a fan of Kevin Spacey so was doubly disappointed in that one. Whoever thought he was right for that film needed their head examined.

On the Jane Eyre point - try the 1980's BBC version with Timothy Dalton as Rochester as the girl playing Jane wasn't attractive, she was 'poor, obscure plain and little' IMO ..just remembered her name Zelah Clarke

dark is rising was rubbish.

golden compass was dissapointing (though i liked lyra and nicole kidman)

narnia was AWFUL!!!!

the perfect storm is a fantastic book but a weird film.. the point of a book is that we DON'T KNOW what happened to the boat - but obviously to make a film they had to show the ending so they made up what 'probably happened'.

The execution of the film is ok (acting etc) but i don't know WHO ever thought of making it into a film in the first place - daft idea.

Catch 22 was AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL - I remember seeing it at middle school after the book made a big impression on me and was soooooo disappointed.

Agree about The Beach as well.

Along came a spider I could not get into the film at all.

I thought the film of the Kite Runner lacked all of the emotional and dramatic tension of the book. I watched it on telly and switched off half way through.
BEST adaptation though I think was Jude the Obscure with Christopher Ecclestone. Wonderful. And I thought the film of The English Patient was better constructed than the book.
Mermaid I didn't know Donnie Brasco was a book. I love that film! Makes me cry at the end.

Can I vote for any screen adaptation of Jane Eyre? Because they just can't get the simple idea that:

• Jane Eyre is physically unattractive
• Blanche Ingram is physically beautiful

And if you can't understand that one of the main points of the book is that it has a plain and insignificant heroine how the hell can you make a decent adaptation?