Telly/film adaptations of books that made you fart with rage

[solidgoldbrass]

I will never forget the outrageous horror that was the TV adaptation of Christopher Brookmyre's Quite Ugly One Morning - not only do they cast an irishman as the glaswegian hero but they give it this absolute sexist mullering by totally changing the two heroines (from sorted dyke and feisty single woman to frisky single and desperate ex-wife) and fuck it up COMPLETELY...

have to bump this for the title comedy value

FWIW Gone With The Wind (great as it is as a film) is practically a whole different story.

imo if you love a book, don't watch the film.
I remember years ago loving the flowers in the attic book the film was silly, they left out the incest that was what the book was about!!
not high brow I know but I now advoid films of books

2shoes you've brought back memories with that one! I think every girl in my year read that book when we were 14

God I remember Flowers in the Attic - film was such a disappointment.

Golden Compass was also a terible film - they missed out the whole ending completely

Remeber thinking the Firm was also wrong

Film Jaws is also very different to the book, but both were good!
DH says Judge Dredd - we're not exactly very highbrow here ar we

Every one I've seen of Wuthering Heights. Why can't someone do it well? It's a gift, surely?
Imagine Clive Owen as Heathcliff mmmmm

Howards End film missed the crucial bits of the novel.

" I will make you see the connection, if it kills you"

She makes him see it. He dies eventually.

in the film she never utters these words, and he lives happily on.

Utter rot.

Evening silky!

evening Panny!

Yeap flowers in the attic crap, and the new version of Charlie and the choc factory is just wrong and scary

ds (17) says all the harry potter films

Matilda.

Loved Matilda! Watched it lots of times with dd when she was small. The bit where she does the extended arithmatic in seconds is fab. Not true to the book then?

It's American! That's enough for me.

Same with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Why can't American actors do British accents? Is it that hard?

And bloomin' Kevin Costner in Robin Hood. (and breathe...)

Goodnight Mister Tom with John Thaw - argggggggggh!

Yes, re OP and Brookmyre book, I think it was ludicrous that they couldn't stick with the original female characters from the book too, I actually remember something about it at the tim, that they were prepared to include the rather disgusting opening scene but a lesbian policewoman was too much - this was this century! (the TV adaptation, the book was probably late 90s).

Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Why Nick Cage, why?

Elkiedee, yes the book was mid-90s, the adaptation about 2003 - and the messing up of the female characters was the absolute worst thing because Brookmyre writes pretty good female characters, and this adaptation made them both into just props for the hero...

Didn't watch, because just the review made me apoplectic, but the film of The Dark Is Rising...

And the Shipping News.

CrackFox I quite like Nick Cage!

Yeah, just not in that film.

The trailer for "The Dark Is Rising" was enough to put me off. The BBC's 1990s version of "Elidor" was also pretty awful - sanitised and transposed to summer, it makes a total nonsense of the scene with the carol-singers!

What about some at the other end of the scale? The BBC's adaptation of Iain Banks's "The Crow Road" was a good piece of work - I didn't even mind the Uncle Rory character being there as a ghost, as it made something work visually which otherwise would only have worked in the book.

Also the Robert Redford version of "The Great Gatsby" is excellent - some parts are almost exactly how imagined them to be in the book. The only thing wrong with it is that Mia Farrow and the other woman should be playing each other's characters!

Oh, yes - I think I preferred the TV Crow Road to the book, except for where they beat the car with sticks - in the book they beat the bin the car crashed into, which is much more futile and so much more poignant. I don't know why they changed it.

Billie Piper as Fanny Price in Mansfield Park was pretty bad - what is the point of adapting a book if you don't have the smallest clue to what makes the heroine tick?

War of the Worlds
About a Boy
Five Children and It
Possession
I,Robot
The Golden Compass
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
A Little Princess
the Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Lolita

Funniest of all - Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I saw this at the Lumiere cinema in London over 20 years ago. When Rupert Everett first sashayed onto the screen as the mysterious macho stranger just come to town, the entire audience fell off their seats howling with laughter! Worst piece of miscasting ever!