Good Books to Good Movies, A Rare Translation

If you are planning to see the Lovely Bones movie and do not want anything ruined for you, especially if you have not read the book, do not read this post. The same thing goes for My Sister's Keeper. But, if you have read them, seen them, or are like certain friends of mine who ask about the endings of things before seeing them... GO RIGHT AHEAD and keep reading. Side note, I am no Roger Ebert but I am opinionated, so here it goes: Really good books often do not make really good movies. This idea holds true for really good musicals to movies as well, but for this situation the first rule is relevant.

I had always heard about how good the book the Lovely Bones was, so when I got a kindle and jump started my "get back into reading for pleasure" phase, this was the first book on my list. It absolutely did not dissapoint, but the entire time I was reading it I kept thinking "how is this going to be made into a movie?". I just could not rationalize how the feelings I had when reading the book could be remade through a movie, or how the " in between" and all her memories could really be shown through a logical progression of scenes. As it turns out, my fears were a reality and they really can't translate this book into a movie. After the Lord of the Rings, I thought Peter Jackson would have had a chance to make this amazing book into a movie masterpiece, but unfortunately I had too much faith in this hobbit man.

It is not just that the movie was not a good version of the book, but it is that he CHANGED the book, and left out key pieces of plot, for the movie. I do not understand why directors do this. Yes, books are long and things need to be left out to make a movie, but changing endings, and getting rid of key plot lines and characters just DOES NOT make sense. The first time this really upset me was in the movie My Sister's Keeper. The dramatic ending of the book, killing the sister who is not dying, stressed a theme of the unpredictability of life. Yet, in the movie with Cameron Diaz, the sister who has been dying the entire time dies. Seriously Jodi Picoult, you must have really sold out. Without this twist ending the story becomes super predictable, and gets rid of the ENTIRE shock of the book and the ENTIRE point of it. AWESOME. I did not even care that they deleted the character of the guardian ad litem and her whole relationship with the lawyer, but changing the ENDING completely...seriously??

I was not as erged and enraged with the Lovely Bones movie, but I did have some serious qualms with it. My biggest issues were about evidence and facts. For example in the book, a dog finds Susie's elbow and they find her hat, but that is all they have of her until much later when they find a charm from her charm bracelet. But, in the movie, they find no bones, and instead find blood and reminance of the "underground shack". The sister also finds not just a drawing of the shack, but newspaper clippings about Susie, and her hair in a book in Mr. Harvey, the killer's, house. This information is all false, and implies the family had much more evidence and closure than they ever did. A theme of the book is sort of how do you catch someone you know did it, with no evidence except what Susie knows in the in-between. The answer is that you can't.

The book is also much more about family and relationship dynamics throughout such a horrible tragedy, and a lot of that is really lacking in the movie. The mom's affair is left out, the dad's quest to find out who did it is not as strong, and the grandmother comes much earlier in the movie than she does in the book. In addition, in the book Susie is kissed by the boy she likes before she dies, and in the movie, they make it seem like she is Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed, waiting in the after-life, instead of the baseball mound, to kiss the boy she loves.

Finally, Mr. Harvey dies by the icicle... for a reason. The idea that a perfect murder would be done by an icicle was completely neglected in the movie, so for my friends who had never read the book, this death did not make any sense and seemed odd and unlikely. This takes the satisfying nature of his death away, the sort of karma killing, and makes it just seem like...oh well, he died.

The movie did have two saving graces, which probably were not what Peter Jackson wanted me to say I liked best. The grandma, played by Susan Sarandon, is hilarious, and she has sort of a Mrs. Robinson feel about her. Also, Jackson chose to make the Holly character so stereotypically Asian that I could not help but laugh every time she spoke. It was like watching the the Dude Where's my Car.."and then"..."no and then" scene...over and over again...only in the "in between" and much more depressing.

I would also like to thank my friend's sister for making the movie 100 times more enjoyable. When Susie's sister jumps out the window of the killers house with the "book" and is lying on the ground hurt while Harvey comes after her, my friend screams at the top of her lungs "GET UPPPPPPPPPPPPP". The entire theater laughed, and I began to reminisce about my times watching Stomp the Yard at the Bridge in West Philly where the audience reactions MADE the movie. Hopefully I do not need to paint a picture of why this movie in this location was particularly enjoyable. Because of the length of the movie, and my feelings about the book to movie translation, I will always be grateful for her decision to scream.