Top Ten Best/Worst Movie Adaptations (July 9)

The women who played the lively characters in The Help by Kathryn Stockett made them come alive for me in a way I did not imagine.  This is one of the very few occasions when I liked the movie more than I liked the book.  

I liked all of the Harry Potter movies.  It was so amazing to be able to enter the world of Hogwarts and the directors and actors did fabulous jobs at creating this world exactly as I had imagined it.  

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is probably one of my favorite books.  I was really skeptical when I heard that there was a movie adaptation of this one.  I was pleasantly surprised by this movie.  They did a great job of bringing out the unique narrative voice in the movie.  This one was impressive!

Sense and Sensibility is my all-time favorite movie.  The sets and costumes were all so well done in this movie.  The actors are all magnificent and the characters come to life in a very real way.  

Bridget Jones’ Diary is another favorite of mine.  The actors did such a great job with this hilarious plot.  And another plus: COLIN FIRTH.  He is my movie boyfriend and a super sweet Mark Darcy.  

It makes me cringe to think about this movie.  That is how bad it is.  I was so disappointed by this one, because it is a case in which seeing the movie might actually make a child not want to read the book.  Luckily, it was not very popular so many people have not seen this movie. Go read Inkheart for sure, but skip this movie.  It is a waste of your time.  

These movies are horrible.  I am sorry to everyone out there that loves them, but they are terrible adaptations.  I loved reading the Twlight saga and could not put the books down while I was reading them.  I was excited about the movies but really did not enjoy them.  

I was so excited for The Hunger Games.  Then I tried to watch the movie.  It makes sense that there was not as much tension in the movie because some of the scenes in the book would have been much too graphic for a PG-13 rating.  In the words of one of my students, “the capitol people were way overdone in this movie.”  This is probably not one of the worst adaptations out there, but I was very disappointed so it made my list.

I couldn’t even get through this movie.  I love the Stephanie Plum books, but the characters didn’t match the pictures I had in my head at all!  I might give this one another chance soon, but I am not sure about it.

The Golden Compass is another movie that I was really upset with.  This is an amazing book and for a while it was hard to get kids interested in it because the movie was so horrid.  It is not surprising that this was a hard movie to make because the story and characters are so complex.  I wish they would have just left this book alone.  

What movies do you think did the best or the worst job with their adaptations of a book?  I would love to hear from you in the comments below.