I am Saddened by America Today
Today, I looked at my favorite website (as I do every day). There, I saw something that was too horrific to behold. In the movie boxoffice, Pirates of the Caribbean moved down to number two and Bad Boys II moved up to number one.
I feel saddened to live in a society where something like Bad Boys II can actually gross anything. Okay, so Will Smith is kind of cute. That’s all I’ll give the flick (I’m not a Martin Lawrence fan). The reviewers’ consensus on the flick (notice that I don’t give it the title “film” which usually involves artistic merit) was “Two and a half hours of explosions and witless banter.” I guess it’s not so much that people pay money to see this movie as the fact that people are actually entertained by this. *sigh* This is definitely a lowest common denominator flick.
Granted…I haven’t actually seen the movie. But, some things in life are avoided simply because you know they are crap for crap even before you start. I mean, the equation of Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, “witless banter,” and car explosions doesn’t really do it for me. I’m sure the script is really great.
I’ve also noticed something interesting. Most of the best movies (or at least the really good ones) originally come from novels. 2001: A Space Odyssey, High Fidelity, Legally Blonde, The Hours, A River Runs Through It….these all stemmed from well written novels. As Josh says, Hollywood knows how to present a movie, but they don’t know how to write one. For example, I think that Legally Blonde was a terribly entertaining movie…I loved it. It came from the book Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown. Nice movie. Then, the bastards in Hollywood decided that they could gross more profit off of this lovely idea by creating a sequel…Legally Blonde II, Red, White, and Blonde. It had one of the crappiest scripts I’ve seen in a long time. (I knew it would be a bad movie going in, but I can’t resist Reese Witherspoon).
I think A River Runs Through It is both an excellent movie and a superiorly written novel. They are both thoughtfully done. Thank you, Hollywood, for not making a poorly written sequel following this first movie that was done correctly.
Does anyone else know of other good/bad novel to movie conversions?