DISAPPOINTED? HELL YEAH.

Blog number 517 *******  20 Day 2011

We went to see the movie, "Water For Elephants" today. I read the book the movie was based upon, months earlier. I been waiting for that movie because I so loved the book. I loved that book to death. Well, not to death. I'm still here, right? Wherever this is. Or whatever this is. Or whatever.


The movie? Not so good. The book was an adventure story, the movie of the same name, a love story. Way too much of the movie plot was taken up with kissin' and huggin' and deep soulful looks.

In the book, almost half the story was about this old man in a nursing home and the problems he had with the fellow "tenants" and the nursing staff. He's the one telling the story and when he does, it flashes back to when he was with the circus. So we got two plots working here. Both of them fascinating.

 In the movie, the old man is there in the beginning and there at the end and nowhere to be found in the middle.  In the book we get to know the old man.  We get to know his wants and desires, his annoyances, who he has the most trouble with, things like that.  

In the movie, we have one plot and it ain't fascinating. We have the obligatory sex scene put there, I am sure, due to committee plagiarizing. It is a scene we have seen in a thousand movies, at least. One director uses something and forever after, all movies must have it. Because it works, see? Not because it is good, but because it works. Kinda like still using a stick to plow a field because we don't trust tractors.

But the worst thing from my point of view was that the book gave you the idea that a certain person was going to kill another certain person and at the end there was a switch that made sense, but that I, for one, never saw coming. In the movie, that was lost in the love story. Phffft!