Question..The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of Books-to-Movies...

[tracy_d74]

 Monday night I watched Sunday's at Tiffany on Lifetime. It was supposed to be based on James Patterson's novel with the same title.  I sooooo adored that book. I smiled the entire time I read it. The story of a child's imaginary friend returning when the child is an adult...FUN. I had high hopes for the movie. Why I bother having hopes for books brought to the screen is beyond me, because more often than not the movie is a BIG disappointment.  This was the case for Sunday's. They needed to say it was LOOSELY based on the novel. I mean, the only things that were the same were: the character names, the character's professions, and they had a couple of scene's at Tiffany's.  I kept thinking, "Has my memory been Q-tipped, swabbed clean? The book was different. The book was better. SOOO much better."

Anyhoo, it got me thinking about how often books-to-movies just miss the mark...completely...like the screen writer and director are reading the book with vaseline-occluded eyes. I just don't get it.

For me, the worst (relatively recent) adpatations are:
Time Traveler's Wife (A book not meant to be film, IMHO)
Order of Phoenix (They left too much out)

For me, the (relatively recent) good/tolerable ones are:
Speak (done for Lifetime)
New Moon (but Twilight was sooo comical, it didn't have to do much to improve.)

So what do you think are the best and worst of book-to-movie adaptations (recent or not recent?)