Breakfast of Champions is pretty much unfilmable by even the most talented of directors and screenwriters, but theabomination that was born was unwatchable and had little to do with the absurdist book other than names and vague character traits.
The Steve Martin remake of Cheaper by the Dozen and the Dennis Quaid remake of Yours, Mine & Ours both took true stories memoirs from the 1920s and 1960s respectively, transported them to the 21st century, and pretty much abandoned the originals other than the “madcap wackiness of a huge family”. World War I husband-wife efficiency experts Frank and Lillian Gilbreth become a college football coach and his homemaker wife. YM&O holds up slightly better in that at least it’s still about a naval officer, plus the first film version changed a lot from the book (the families actually blended a lot easier than the movie counterparts) but it’s still mostly name only.
The original YM&O movie had its moments but I couldn’t get over the image of a 57 year old pregnant Lucille Ball. The real Helen Beardsley (b. 1930) was young enough to be the daughter of the actress playing her (Lucy was born 1911).
Yeah. One of the major plot points of the true story of Cheaper by the Dozen is when the father dies and the mother must take over not only leadership of the family, but her husband’s consulting business. I didn’t see the remake, but I was stunned (if not surprised) to see that the sequel to the remake still started Steve Martin as the somehow not very dead father. (The original had a sequel too, but it was about the fatherless family.)
The Neverending Story cuts out the entire second half of the book, replacing with an ending completely incompatible with not just the plot, but the moral themes, of the missing parts of the book.
Neverending Story II sort of was kind of based on the second half of the book, but instead of Bastien losing his memories because of the use of Auryn, he loses his memories due to a magical/mechanical “memory stealing machine” built by one of Xayide’s servants so II both rewrites and misses the point as well.
By the way, I highly recommend the book, for all ages. I first read it at the late age of 16, and have read it about four times since then (last time about a month ago) and enjoyed it each time. Many years ago, I found out a friend had also read the book, and as though choreographed, we both said to each other spontaneously, “It changed my life!” Well, maybe it will change a youngster’s outlook, probably not an adult’s, but it’s still enjoyable for anyone.
The Steve Martin movie has no relationship to the book except the title. It doesn’t even use the same characters. It just makes up a completely new family and updates it to modern day. Aside from that, it’s complete shit.
I haven’t seen the Steve Martin version of CBTD, but I remember thinking that the title doesn’t even make sense anymore. In the original their father, an efficiency expert, would always answer “because things are cheaper by the dozen” when asked why he had 12 kids- it was an occupational joke of sorts.
Also, I’m guessing that Martin doesn’t play a devout Mormon or devout Catholic or devout anything else, and people with religious convictions against birth control are about the only people who have 12 kids anymore.