I, too, enjoyed the American remake. It just wasn’t Fever Pitch.
Yeah, I first was confused before your post because I only knew the British film, which I found quite good and amusing. Nothing groundbreaking, but it had a typical British charm and was true to real football passion (I’m a lifelong football fan myself, so I can relate). I especially loved the scene when after Arsenal won the championship, the people take to the streets and celebrate, with “Bright Side Of The Road” by Van Morrison playing. I’ve not seen the American remake about the Red Sox, and though I knew the team’s name I had to look it up to know what sport it was, that shows how much I know about North American sports.
OTOH, the American production of Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity”, a book that was very close to my heart as an almost fanatical music fan, didn’t suffer from being transplanted from London to LA and kept the charm of the original.
Chicago
Oops, remembered wrongly. It’s been some time since I saw the film.
The American version was supposed to have a different ending because it was ridiculous to think that the Red Sox were going to win the championship after 86 years of futility. They just happened to film the movie the year they won. The ending was filmed during the final game and they had permission to film during the on field celebration.
That coincidence added a nice bit to the ending of that movie.
I mean, STEPHEN KING has written that story before.
Not the same way. In this one the guy loses weight, but not bulk.
As for the previous version – “Thinner” – I long ago noticed the similarity between that and a Steve Ditko story “I Must Find Korumbu!” from Journey into Mystery #64 fr0m January 1960 (reprinted in Fear #3 1971)
Don’t know how this slipped my mind:
Paul Gallico wrote Beyond the Poseidon Adventure as a sequel based on the original movie - several of the survivors returned to the hulk for various reasons and I-don’t-remember ensues. It was bad, real bad. The movie was even worse. The producers jettisoned the entire sequel novel and started from scratch. Sally Field starred; need I say more? Avoid at all costs.
You mean to tell me Star Wars Holiday Special didn’t end this conversation?
What did that adapt?
The Star Wars movies?
I mean is that an adaptation, or a different/new story? It’s not taking an existing work and repeating it in the same or different form, but maybe it’s the universe that’s being adapted?
I’m not following.
Movie singular; when the Star Wars Holiday Special was first broadcast, only the original film had been released.
Right, it is not really an adaptation.
I mentioned the Star Wars Holiday special back at #7. But this was my argument for why it was an adaptation!
I’m finishing up Talbot Mundy’s King – Of the Khyber Rifles right now, and I looked up the 1953 motion picture adaptation of it (which probably spurred the folks at Classics Illustrated to put out their comic-book adaptation of it the same year). I haven’t seen the film, but from the description of it online, they practically threw out the plot of the book and wrote something almost completely new, going so far as to change the lead character’s name from “Athelstan King” to “Alan King”. (I can see the Hollywood bigwigs discussing it – "Come on, nobody’s going to like a hero named “Athelstan”. Make it something simpler, like “Alan: – it’s got the same letters in it. And no comedian is ever going to use that name!”)
The earlier film adaptation, The Black Watch, also seems to be vastly changed from the novel. And they changed the protagonist’s name to “Donald Gordon King”. I guess nobody in Hollywood thought that “Athelstan” was a bankable name.
Looks like the most faithful adaptation was the Classics Illustrated version.
So this joins the subset of bad film adaptations where They Threw Out The Original Plot and Made the Screenplay Up:
King – of the Khyber Rifles
I, Robot
The Spy Who Loved Me
Ice Station Zebra
This Island Earth
Riverworld
Nightfall
Freejack
Jerry was a Man
Starship Troopers
Watchbird
Total Recall
Mostly espionage and science fiction, I observe.
Actually, I have to make a change to that list. There’s another class of Bad Movie Adaptations – “Movies Where the Original Story, Although it had a Good Point or Cute Twist, Wasn’t Long Enough, So They Padded It Out To Feature Length”. Too long a title, maybe, but it gets the point across. I’ve often argued tht the way to make a good science fiction movie as to take a short work (rather than a large one that has to be abridged) and take adequate time to explain and develop the story. This is proof that some people just can’t do that.
Candidates:
Total Recall (1987 Verhoeven version) – nominally based on Philip K. Dick’s We can Remember it for you Wholesale (a very clever title). The problem is, they exhausted the Dick material in the first twenty minutes or so. NOW what do they do? Answer – steal the rest of your plot from Robert Sheckley’s novel The Status Civilization. And don’t give him any credit. For the 2012 edition, throw out most of what was in the earlier film, distancing it still more from both sources. Eliminate the “going to Mars” part with the much more believable “subway that goes through the center of the Earth”.
Mimic – 1997 Guillermo del Toro movie based on Donald a Wollheim’s short story of the same name. The problem is, they exhaust the short story in almost no time and, once you’ve done the Big Reveal, where do you go from there?
Invasion of the Saucer Men and Attack of the Eye Creatures (AKA (Attack of the the Eye Creatures, because the guy who made up the title card didn’t notice that he had “the” in two different lines) – Believe it or not, this is based on a short story by Paul W. Fairman entitled The Cosmic Frame, which is actually pretty good, with a neat twist. Again, though, once you’ve revealed the twist, where do you go from there? I’ll bet that most people who have seen either film never even noticed the twist. Read the story (Originally in Amazing Science Fiction May 1955, reprinted in Thrilling Science Fiction December 1974, then in several anthologies – Title: The Cosmic Frame ) The filler that makes up the rest of each film is pretty awful. The main thing that recommends Invasion of the Saucer Men is that it contains one of Paul Blaisdell’s finest and most iconic creations:
https://www.allsci-fi.com/viewtopic.php?t=286&view=next&sid=fd8564de06c82ec1ff86b568eda4df22
The best thing about Attack of the the Eye Creatures was its well-deserved evisceration on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
I just wanted to mention that, just because the original story or idea is padded out doesn’t mean that it’s a bad movie. Here are cases where the movie transcends the limitations of the original short story:
Eight O’Clock in the Morning by Ray Nelson (1963) – kinda blah alien invasion story, but it was supercharged into the 1988 movie They Live by John Carpenter, with a great performance by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. They added the whole “hidden message” thing and the excellent alien makeup and a whole lotta other stuff. They took the basic premise and just kept going with it to create a real joyride of a film that they had absolutely no clue how to wrap up, except that the alien’s plot is revealed. The last scene is just kind of a WTF? dropped in for your contemplation.
Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates (1940) – story with an interesting twist, bu not enough to carry a whole movie. Robert Wise turned it into the classic science fiction movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, with a script by Edmund H. North and a great score by Bernard Hermann (that incorporated a theremin). They used a lot of stuff from the story, but expanded on it, in the best fashion. The film and its special effects still blow me away in a way the anemic 2008 remake can’t touch.
Of course, the most impressive case of Taking a Short Story and Padding it Into a Feature Film is Stanley Kubrick taking Arthur C. Clarke’s The Sentinel and ballooning it up into 2001: A Space Odyssey.