What makes a good book to movie adaptation? Five great bookish movies....and five lousy ones

April 5, 3:09 AMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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2009 is the Year of the Book to Movie Adaptation.

Not only did bookish movies deliver a decisive spanking to original screenplays at the Academy Awards in January, but book to movie adaptations will rule the box office this entire year, from The Reader, Coraline, He's Just Not That Into You, and Watchmen, to the upcoming delights of New Moon, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, My Sister's Keeper, The Lovely Bones, and A Christmas Carol.

Some of these movies will be excellent; others will be only marginally more enjoyable than a water-boarding session -- which begs the question: what is it that separates a great book to movie adaptation from a torturous and embarrassingly bad one?

One thing is for certain: a good bookish movie is more than a sum of the total of the book's parts -- the Watchmen proved that beyond any doubt. Watchmen stayed true to the book's plot with slavish devotion, portrayed the characters with flawless accuracy, and even duplicated the look of the original illustrations. Yet, despite all of that, the magic Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons managed to work with pen and paper didn't translate to the big screen. It was a good movie, but it certainly wasn't great. (Take a look at the Book Examiner review of it here.)

Likewise, there are plenty of book to movie adaptations that are so unlike the original work they spring from, you'd think the book's loyal fans would be rioting in the streets. Yet somehow, these movies are good, even by book fiend standards. These movies -- Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, Alfonso Cuaron's A Little Princess, Blake Edwards' Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, for example -- seem to slip into a parallel universe, as it were. Even though they feature sometimes outrageously different plots and characters from the books they are based on, because they are such damn good movies by themselves, bookish viewers seem content to let the book versions and the movie versions exist side by side, never to intersect.

Despite these anomalies, the unspoken wish of every book lover watching a bookish adaptation is to see one that simultaneously manages to be a great movie and remain true to the book.

But how is this achieved? This mystical combination is not the result of portraying the characters, plot, or setting with religious devotion. The key to a great book to movie adaptation lies in the film's success at concentrating and magnifying the feelings readers have when they read the book.

Making a bookish film is a lot like cooking a reduction sauce in the kitchen. For all of you clueless, five-thumbed cooks out there, a reduction sauce is made by cooking down a liquid, seasonings, and oil or butter (go for the butter; the taste is worth the clogged arteries) until the resulting sauce is thick and about half the quantity of what you started out with. I make one to go with steak from red wine, beef broth, rosemary, and butter, and when it has simmered down to a scant 1/2 cup, one taste and -- wow! -- the top of your head might blow off. It's thick, it's packed with flavor, and the taste of the red wine and beef is multiplied by about a thousand.

That is exactly what a good book to movie adaptation should do: boil the book down until the best parts are concentrated together in a way that muliplies what made the book great powerful and emotional enough to jump out from the screen and grab people who've never even thought of reading the book.

Here are five book to movie adaptations that fit the bill admirably....and five that failed miserably.

 

5 great book to movie adaptations

1. The Lord of the Rings trilogy: written by J.R.R. Tolkien, film version directed by Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy is the undisputed champion of successful book to movie adaptations. Notice what Mr. Jackson did in the film -- he didn't keep in every stray detail or chain himself to Mr. Tolkien's sometimes irritatingly disorganized writing style. He boiled the story down to its essence, put the movie's emotional impact squarely on the shoulders of the most important scenes, and made certain that any changes, additions, or alterations from the original story served only to contribute to the forward motion of the films. The result? A series of movies that -- dare I say it? -- are even better than the books.

2. Pride and Prejudice: written by Jane Austen, film version directed by Simon Langton

Speak to me not of Keira Knightly or half-budget Masterpiece Theater renditions: this 1995 serial version of Pride and Prejudice is the definitive movie adaptation, case closed. Sure, they had six hours to play with, but I can think of plenty of movies that six or twelve or twenty hours wouldn't have been sufficient enough to make them worth watching. Mr. Langton captured the true essence of Ms. Austen in this film. 

3. The Milagro Beanfield War: written by John Nichols, film version directed by Robert Redford

The MIlagro Beanfield War is a very funny and complex story about the small New Mexican town of Milagro, a proposed multi-million dollar land development, and the inevitable clash between the two. Mr. Redford cut out the more serious and complicated parts of the novel and formed the main plot and the remaining humor into a movie that is an absolute joy to watch. The casting for this is probably the best I've ever seen in a bookish film. I drove people crazy the first I saw this because I kept shouting out in glee each time a new character came on screen: "That is EXACTLY how I imagined him!!!" "She looks DEAD ON like how she is described in the book!!" Most of Mr. Redford's films leave me contemplating suicide. This one is a gem. 

4. Persuasion: written by Jane Austen, film version directed by Robert Michell

Persuasion is proof positive that a Jane Austen movie adaptation does not need to take six hours in order to: a) stay true to the plot and feel of the story, and b)  be a high-quality film. Persuasion has a much more somber, serious feel than many of Ms. Austen's works, and this film version stays 100% true to that. It doesn't hurt that the two main actors, Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, are experienced Royal Shakespeare Company actors and are outstandingly good.

5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: written by J.K. Rowling, film version directed by Mike Newell

As a confirmed Potter-head, I attend Potter movies on opening night with high expectations. While The Goblet of Fire wasn't my favorite of the series (that honor goes to The Prisoner of Azkaban), I always felt it was the strongest one of the bunch, and I was seriously afraid that it would be slaughtered like The Prisoner of Azkaban version (see Five lousy book to movie adaptations, below). What a relief to see that Mr. Newell managed to capture the book's loss of innocence theme beautifully without wreaking havoc on the story.

Honorable mentions:  Henry V (written by William Shakespeare, film version directed by Kenneth Branagh); Gigi (written by Colette, film version directed by Vincente Minelli); I, Claudius (written by Robert Graves, extremely long and ultimately unfinished film version directed by Herbert Wise).

 

5 lousy book to movie adaptations

1. Twilight: written by Stephenie Meyer, film version directed by Catherine Hardwicke

Let the hate mail begin -- I stand by my original opinion: while there were some occasional bright spots, the movie failed dismally to capture what everyone loved about Twilight to begin with; namely, the vicarious heart-poundingly strong re-living of a first serious crush through Bella's eyes. What seemed in the book sweet and somewhat wistful came across like a bad spoof on the screen. Twi-hards have been pretty divided over the movie: take a look at some of the arguments from Team Loved It and Team Disappointed in the Book Examiner Twilight movie debate.

2. The Joy Luck Club: written by Amy Tan, film version directed by Wayne Wang

I've never walked out of a movie in my life, but five minutes into The Joy Luck Club, I was seriously considering either leaving or swallowing my tongue. Mr. Wang took an emotional and well-written book and struck it deader than Peking duck with a lethal combination of a lousy screenplay, lousy acting, and lousy filming.

3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: written by J.K. Rowling, film version directed by Alfonso Cuaron

I was so angry after watching this movie opening night that, if I could have doomed Mr. Cuaron to the Dementor's Kiss, I would have. If Mr. Cuaron had been content simply to slice and dice the plot, I suppose I could have dealt with that; however, his insistence on getting the feel of vital scenes completely wrong, misusing strong actors like Emma Thompson (Professor Trelawney), and leaving holes in the plot big enough for the Chudley Cannons to fly through, left me cold. If I had been confronted with a boggart at the time, I know exactly what it would have turned into: Mr. Cuaron directing The Goblet of Fire.

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: written by Douglas Adams, film version directed by Garth Jennings

For most Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans, watching this movie was not entirely unlike listening to a Vogon poetry reading. Plenty of people excuse this pathetic attempt at a film by saying that Mr. Adams' book was too complex and contained too much tongue-in-cheek humor to translate well to the screen. I say, if you leave out everything that made the story funny to begin with, introduce storylines and characters never dreamt of in the book,  and only include the spoofiest, silliest bits, what the hell do you expect?

5. The Children of Men: written by P.D. James, film version directed by Alfonso Cuaron

It seems like I am deliberately thrashing on Mr. Cuaron in this "Lousy" section but I truly am not (for the record, I thought his version of A Little Princess was brilliant). However, he and I would get on a good deal better if he would only stop butchering great books with mediocre movie adaptations. In The Children of Men, Mr. Cuaron took a perfectly good, thought-provoking story and mangled it beyond recognition with the addition of snarks on the Iraq war, caged refugees, and an ending that probably made Ms. James wish for death. The combined efforts of Michael Caine and an outstanding Clive Owen (the 4th most attractive man in the history of the world) weren't enough to drag it out of the mud.

(Dis)Honorable Mention: Dune (written by Frank Herbert, pathetic film version directed by David Lynch)

Did I leave your best -- or worst -- bookish film out? Let us know: leave a comment below or direct your thoughts to michellekerns@surewest.net.