It was pretty good.

[jimson]

The actors who portrayed Mattie Devore and Sara Tidwell were almost a perfect match to the characters I imagined in the book.

I thought Pierce Brosnan was a bit of an odd choice before I saw the movie and still do, the British accent didn't really fit and I thought he was a bit old for the part, but I thought he played it pretty well.

Max Devore didn't appear as sinister as I imagined him and I thought Rogette Whitmore was suppose to have white hair.

I am often puzzled by the changes made in a film adaption when there seems no reason to change them, I guess I can understand the change of how Lance Devore died and I guess the changing of the sex of the Tidwell child was made to make it all apply to daughters only.

There was no mention of Noonan hiring Mattie a lawyer and him simply standing up to Devore in the deposition wasn't really enough to make him the big hero from the book IMO.

Also, at no point in the movie was the house referred to as "Sara Smiles."

These are just little things and over all, the story paralleled the book fairly well, but it seems that a few things were changed for no real reason.

Maybe I am becoming a little more tolerant as I get older, but it seems that King adaptions are getting better at following the book.

[blunthead]

I know that an adaptation of a book into a movie is a great artistic challenge, and that the result usually shows to someone or other omission(s) of vital material. Michael Chricton once explained the problem arithmetically: A novel is 400 pages. A screenplay is 40 pages. The screenwriter must tell the same story in 90% less spacetime.

Bag is one of my fave sK books; the movie, not one of my fave sK movies, though I did appreciate being told the basic story again. It was a good movie, imho, made exceptional by sK's original ideas.

[GNTLGNT]

...liked the novel....lukewarm over the film...

[guido tkp]

hmmm...general screenwriting ettiquette,as far as i can recall, still puts a page of screenplay at about a minute of screen-time...chricton might've been somewhat mistaken...

'course...if you ever saw any of the films wherein he wrote the screenplay...now you know why they felt so vapid

loved the book...did not like the movie...not even slightly

[Gerald]

I think Crichton didn't mean literally 40 pages. Just that what's left of a book after adaptation is comparative of 40 pages of the book - meaning 90 % of the book didn't make it into the film.
Seems a bit much to me, but I'm sure he knows what he's talking about.

Watching the film I couldn't help thinking that Brosnan lost his real life wife, Cassandra Harris, who was only 43. It was odd to me to watch it in this light. It's just a role, but it still seems close to home.