Probably has something to do with having to pay alimony to his ex-wife.
I mentioned The Bourne Identity in another thread, but it works here too. I really like the movie and I have watched it lots and lots of times. I got the book at Half Price Books for a dollar, and I think I was over charged. What crap. I really want to finish it so that I can kinda compare it to the movie, but I don’t think I ever will. Blech.
I agree with OtakuLoki about the Princess Bride. Movie is much better than the book.
My main one was already mentioned: The Princess Bride.
So, I’ll bring up another one: Mary Poppins. The book, while not crap, is pretty darn dull.
I disagree. The book and movie are equal in my eyes.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. If you saw the movie first, you were set up to fail with the book because THE MOVIE WAS NOTHING LIKE THE BOOK. A few similarities at the start, and a few characters had the same names, but beyond that it’s just a stupid, 1990s-style “government is gonna kill you!” action flick with more testosterone than class.
The book is about Carlos the Jackal, who is hardly a compelling villain nowadays, since he was caught a decade ago. The book is set in the early 1980s, so none of the stupid whiz-bang spy tech of the movie was possible.
The book was also excellent.
The second film looks to be EVEN FARTHER out from the book than the first. The Bourne Supremacy is supposed to be set in China – and once again, Bourne is not fighting the US government!
Gah. That movie pissed me off. Absolutely no respect for the source material.
Timeline, though it wouldn’t be hard to surpass the book, considering what utter crap it was.
I agree with The Man With The Golden Gun about Timeline. No explaination worked better than ones that made no sense whatsoever, and they cut out a lot of the senseless mendering through the old world crap. <tangent> I fail to understand why people object to the our-world characters understanding them/the old-world characters not having proper accents- the main characters have ear piece translators, remember? </tangent>
Practical Magic is a fairly stupid book that was turned into a watchable movie.
Although certainly not based on a “crap” book, the movie Road to Perdition is better than the graphic novel.
To anyone who hasn’t read “The Horse Whisperer”: the OP is in fact being unnecessarily kind to that awful, awful book.
Adaptation, while loosely based on The Orchid Thief, was at least some messed up fun. I sorta liked The Orchid Thief, but could have done without the seemingly endless history lessons on orchids.
I never knew people could get so freaked out over a flower… :rolleyes:
Well, it does portray Arabs as terrorists…
:rolleyes:
That’s not saying much!! 
I loved The Princess Bride (both book and movie).
Thanks for the warning. I’ll admit that if I find a book is on the NY Times bestseller list, and I hadn’t wanted to read it before I’d heard that I avoid it. So far, so good.
I meant to make it clear I did like the book. However, the tone in the book is very different from that in the movie.
I mean, the end of the book, has Wesley et al riding off into the sunset, just like the movie. But Goldman then goes on about how there’s no guarantee that Inigo’s wound wouldn’t open up, that Fezzick would likely get lost, and Wesley, himself, may be susceptible to relaspses of being dead.
I think it’s worth pointing out that everything in that spoiler box actually happened; it wasn’t a maybe.
I am pretty sure the shark does die at the end of the book. I read it about a year ago and I remember the shark going for Brody at the end but dying due to injury and fatigue before reaching him.
Still pretty lame though and yeah, the movie is far superior to the book.
Years before the movie Mrs. Doubtfire came out, my sister and I read Anne Fine’s YA novel Alias Madame Doubtfire. I remember it as being much better and funnier than the eventual screen adaptation, but my sister always mentions it as an example of a decent movie made from a lousy book. But it’s been so long now that I don’t think either one of us could swear that our memory of the book is accurate.
I do recall that the kids in the book were in on the whole dad-in-drag thing pretty much from the beginning, which is far more plausible (and less insulting to the intelligence of children) than having them fail to recognize their own father. The mother in the book, however, was an unsympathetic shrew.
There was a subplot in the book about how the dad was picking up some extra cash on the side by working as a nude model for an art class. I remember this as being pretty funny, although it’s probably for the best it wasn’t included in the movie. Naked Robin Williams really isn’t suitable family fare.
And what’s funny is Crichton wrote the book because Spielberg was going to make a sequel. But Spielberg basically disregarded the entire book (I don’t blame him).
I second Hannibal. I’m glad they changed the ending for the movie.
I think they did write a more palatable ending for the movie, but I do hope that hidden somewhere is a reel on which they also filmed the book’s ending & that it’ll come out of some special edition DVD in 10 years. S
I think it is a commonly held belief that had Midnight Cowbaoy not been made into a movie the book would have received the praise it was due. Some critics rate it one of the best American post war novels. It certainly joins Miss Lonelyhearts, On The Road, Ask The Dust, and Junky as a literate portrait of a marginalised group. Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo are afforded more humanity and dignity in the book which doesn’t wallow in the “look how daring I am” decadence of the film.
Other great adaptions are:
Shrek from a terrifically funny childrens book. Since it is written for real children it is in worse taste than the movie and all the better for it. Less of the redeeming virtues and more of the horrific behaviour. A great effort to make a movie largely true to the spirit of the original.
The Day of the Jackal, of course the original. The book is very good but the movie is close to perfect. Hard enough to write a thriller about a crime that failed (and we know it) but then to make a movie of that book and be thrilling. Wow.
Fever Pitch is another Nick Hornby (About a Boy) book about the relationship between a male teacher obsessed with Arsenal FC and a female teacher with no interest in sport. The book however has no story like this at all - it is a series of essays about “things”, all revolving around Arsenal’s fortunes and Hornby’s life. A kind of intertwined autobiography/sport book. The movie which stars Colin Firth is very very funny and never had the success it deserved.