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

120 replies

steamedtreaclesponge · 25/08/2009 15:49

Following on from the other thread, what are the most disappointing film adaptations you've seen?

Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones made me want to gouge my own eyes out with a fork. And it's not even one of my favourite books.

OP posts:
fluffles · 27/08/2009 10:03

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.

fluffles · 27/08/2009 10:05

dark is rising was rubbish.

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

narnia was AWFUL!!!!

teadrinker · 27/08/2009 10:22

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

ReallyReally · 27/08/2009 10:24

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

BuildABurger · 27/08/2009 10:31

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

BalloonSlayer · 27/08/2009 11:46

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.

MermaidSpam · 27/08/2009 19:13

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

Bettymum · 28/08/2009 09:38

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

PuppyMonkey · 28/08/2009 09:44

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...????

bamboobutton · 28/08/2009 09:50

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 · 28/08/2009 13:25

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?

Iklboo · 28/08/2009 13:28

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

flyingcloud · 28/08/2009 13:32

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.

PuppyMonkey · 28/08/2009 13:45

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

glasjam · 28/08/2009 13:55

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.

themoon66 · 28/08/2009 14:04

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

thighsmadeofcheddar · 28/08/2009 14:08

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

slug · 28/08/2009 14:21

Dune. Surely the worst adaption ever.

Second The Handmaid's Tale.

bran · 28/08/2009 14:27

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.

RustyBear · 28/08/2009 14:36

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.

BalloonSlayer · 28/08/2009 21:26

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,

Pogleswood · 28/08/2009 22:38

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..

glasjam · 28/08/2009 23:25

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

bran · 29/08/2009 09:23

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.

Littlepurpleprincess · 29/08/2009 12:52

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.