02 January 2007

Making Movies from Books

I am currently watching "In Her Shoes," a movie based on the book of the same name by Jennifer Weiner. While I think this movie is ok, I don't think it fully does the book justice. And that is one of the biggest problems I have with movies being made from books.

Some movie adaptations are fine, although none are jumping to mind. The main problem I see is that in a movie, generally the characters cannot be as developed as in the book. That could be ok, but when they try to throw in little character quirks, it often makes no sense. For instance, a certain catch phrase, or talking about a tertiary character. We aren't given enough to understand what the heck is going on.

It takes a really good screenwriter to adapt a good book (or a bad book). Some books beg to be made into movies, but the movie maker would do well to concentrate on only certain aspects of the story, and not try to get it all in.

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