I Bite My Thumb At You

A quick rant for you before I hit the sack tonight:

I am a reader and a movie watcher. As such, I generally enjoy seeing the film versions of books I liked. Even though we know that movies have been "ruining the book since 1920," I usually watch and enjoy with few complaints; most of these films are fairly true to the plot of the story--even if they have to bypass some of the side stories or small details. In pieces like Harry Potter or the epic LOTR Trilogy you have to skip things in filming--they're just too long and involved to capture every little piece in even a 3.5 hour* movie. Even the Twilight films, which most people would agree are TERRIBLE, at least follow the basic plot line of Meyer's books. Four stars for faithfulness to the material! Two thumbs down for general suckiness. Woohoo!

The point in all of this is that I will forgive a lot when they're trying to translate book to screen. But I get really peeved when they (whomever THEY are...) take an incredibly awesome book to the Silver Screen with the same title, but only loooooosely base their movie on what happens in the story. Case in Point--The Power of One. The book is amazing. One of the best things I read in 2010. Its an engrossing and involved tale of South Africa. The protagonist is a young English boy who has an almost mythical ability to span the many and various divisions in this country of "tribes." I loved it. So tonight I saw the movie. And was sorely disappointed. The script took out key characters and plot points, created new things that were never in the book, and generally changed a whole heck of a lot. The theme of the movie wasn't even close to the theme of the book, for heaven's sake! Boo.

Moral of the story is: Read the book. Skip the movie. Good night, ladies and gentlemen.

*Three and a half hours in a movie theater just really shouldn't happen, though. Let's be honest.