Best and Worst

What is everyone's opinion on the worst and best movie adaptations?

Worst: Eragon, Interview with the Vampire, and all the Harry Potter series

Best: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Red Dragon

Can't think of any "worsts", offhand; guess I try to forget them as quickly as possible! But for best adaptation I would name To Kill a Mockingbird and The hunt for Red October; the latter was, to my mind, better than the book, in spite of Connery's relentless Scottish accent.

I have yet to see Eragon because I'm afraid of the reviews my friends have given me.

I highly enjoyed the Harry Potter movies prior to Goblet of Fire because of it's large differences from the book. (Prior to that I was agreeable with the movies, since then not so much.)

I really can't think of any best and worst.
Sweeney Todd I appreciated, even though it cut parts out it didn't "change" things per se. It just cut things to make it more manageable. (Although, there was more gore than was absolutely necessary.)

I enjoyed the adaptation of the graphic novel 30 Days of Night also. In fact, I enjoyed the movie more than the graphic novels.

OK, Eragon was a dreadful adaptation of a dreadful book, which resulted in a dreadful movie.

Best adaptation of a book into a movie: To Kill a Mockingbird.
Worst adaptation of a (good) book: Starship Troopers.

Best: The Hours Pretty darn faithful.
Worst: The Serpent and the Rainbow This was a quite entertaining anthropological sort of book that they managed to turn into a crackpot horror movie.

Socialchild, I liked the movie for Starship Troopers. So the book was better??? I'll have to go pick that up!

Jolene, it's not that the book Starship Troopers was better than the film, it's just that the film was so completely different from the book that it was distracting.

Imagine an adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone where they didn't use any magic and Voldemort was simply a misunderstood victim. Add in some teenaged angst (a la Dawson's Creek), and you have an idea of the problems I had with the film version of Starship Troopers.

It's like ordering apple pie at a restaurant and when they bring it to you, you discover that the apples they used to make the pie were pineapples. Pineapple pie might be good, but if it's not really what you were expecting, you are bound to be disappointed.

Hmmm...so, if I enjoyed the movie will I enjoy the book?

Probably not. The book is more of an interior novel. It's told from the first-person perspective of Johnny Rico, who is Filipino, not Brazilian, and an adult, not a high school kid. It was a vehicle for Robert A.Heinlein to explore social issues such as the right to vote, the necessity of war, and capital punishment.

If you like that kind of novel, you will like this one.

Seven Years in Tibet. Great movie. Lousy book.

Definitely very bad if not the worst.
Movie adaptation of Bless the Child. I was pleasantly surprised by the book. Was expecting just another trashy horror novel. Instead what I got was a wise, compassionate book from an author who obviously reads widely.

Additionally, it introduced me to what is now one of my favourite poems, even though I'm not generally one for Victorian poetry. Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven.

... the movie was just an utter travesty. Kim Basinger. Blechhh...

Devil Wears Prada...liked the book much better than the movie.

I think the books are just way better in general, so it doesn't really matter.

I'd go along with To Kill a Mockingbird for the most faithful adaptation.

I thought that the Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room With a View was better than the novel, although I'm not a great fan of this author.

Hardy is an author who doesn't seem to translate well over the silver screen. Far From the Madding Crowd from the 1960s wasn't bad, but the less said about the more recent adaptations of Jude the Obscure and The Woodlanders, the better.