It’s officially summer here; yesterday was the last day of school. And to celebrate, I thought I’d put up a summerish book-to-movie post, since around here at least, movies are part of what summer is all about.
Having read the book a short while before I watched the movie, I have to say that I had no real allegiances to it in particular. I thought that I wouldn’t care if they tweaked the story.
However, while I enjoyed the movie — Jodie Foster as Alexandra Rover was hands-down the best part — and thought it was very cute. I actually found myself annoyed at it for changing the storyline. (Usually I don’t care, so this surprised me.) 
I could go through the litany of everything they did wrong (even if having the character Alex Rover be the author Alex Rover’s imaginary friend was entertaining, it was wrong. Just wrong.) but I’ll refrain. I’ll just say that they threw in so many extra things, and changed enough to make it more unlike the book than like the book. And while I understand that movies and books are not the same medium, and that when you just stick a book on the screen it doesn’t work (Harry Potter movies 1-4, for example; 1 being the worst), I still was not quite happy with the changes they made. It made the story lose some of its care-free quality, it’s innocence. And I missed that.
Verdict: the movie’s very cute, but the book’s better.
The Book Nut 
We have the dvd of Nim’s Island for one of our family movie nights – haven’t watched it yet. I think I will probably pick up the book AFTER I see the movie. Thanks for the review!
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I thought the movie was cute too, but haven’t read the book.
I have to disagree on the Harry Potter movies. I look at them as sort of an abridgment of the books – fun but missing a lot of great parts. I love watching them, especially since I don’t always have time to pick up the books when I’m in the mood.
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Alyce — I agree, the HP movies do work as an abridgment of the books, but if you haven't read the books, you're missing plot points (except for #5 which works well on it's own). A movie should stand on its own, apart from the book; someone who has not read the book should be able to make sense of the movie, and I think that this is where the HP movies fall short. IMHO.
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I haven’t read this, but I saw it while baby-sitting and thought it was funny. Maybe if you’d seen it first and then read it you’d’ve liked it better. 🙂 And the kids I was baby-sitting certainly liked it, which is always nice.
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And one of them was a kid who liked Harry Potter, but couldn’t remember the three main characters from the beginning of the movie to the end.
Personally, I love the HP movies. 🙂
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