Remake was better

Agree completely - - and yet the 1997 version isn't out on DVD is it?

The tone in Kubrick's version is completely off, and it is such a pale version of the novel. The whole time I was watching Sellers I couldn't help thinking of Dr Strangelove.

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Fire Commissioner Cover-Up Immediately!

I too prefer the Jeremy Irons version.

I jst finished sitting through the Kubrick film....sigh*
its so... outlandish.
Sellers was just incredibly annoying.

The newer film actually adapts the book to a proper film.
and being a fan of the book, I really REALLY didn't like the 62 version.

If there be a god...than hide from him our most evil enterprise!

The Lyne film's an artless soft porn trash, pure kitsch. In spirit, it's much in keeping with the early-1990's erotic psychothriller cycle, like something Joe Esterhaz may have written.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

This movie isn't nearly as good as the BOOK, but it's far better than the later adaptation. The fact that this movies is humorous isn't a failing at all because the book is humorous too in a lot of places, if ultimately tragic. There is a LACK of humor in the Lyne movie and I think that is much more of a failing.

As for giving away the ending, the book is not a murder mystery. Just because you know he killed Quilty in the movie you don't know WHY until the end. You also know in the book he's a murderer from the beginning. Yeah, you don't know who he killed, but so what?

Also, Kubrick is a far better filmmaker than a hack like Adrian Lyne, and though their characters are drastically altered from those in the book, Peter Sellers and Shelly Winters are simply more talented than their counterparts in the later adaptation. The actors playing the two main characters--Mason and Irons and Lyon and Swain--are about the same though talent-wise.

Both "Lolita's" were old enough and sufficiently mature-looking that the average guy probably at least UNDERSTANDS "Humbert" wanting to sleep with them (and "Annabel Leigh" in the Lyne movie looks like she's about 20). If they had used a 12-year-old girl at the beginning it would have been too creepy and it wouldn't have worked later when she's 17. So unless you want to do a "Boyhood" thing and have some young actress play "Lolita" through five formative years of her life. . .But NEITHER version did that.

Kubrick largely failed to successfully adapt the book because it's really not adaptable (although it is still a very decent movie). It was extreme hubris for a talentless douchebag like Lyne to even TRY to adapt Nabokov OR follow Kubrick. The best I can say about the remake is that it is better than all the other crap this loser directed (except maybe "Jacob's Ladder").

"Let be be finale of seem/ The only emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream"

[deleted]

While I enjoy both films (though I tend to favor the '97 one slightly more due to the similarities to the book), I honestly don't think either of them can truly compare to the novel. Both Kubrick and Lyne incorporate elements of it into their films, but I personally don't feel as though they truly capture the feeling of Nabokov's original work.

Actually, my biggest problem with the 1962 version is that there is simply too much of Clare Quilty. I think Quilty should be kept in the background most of the time, so we don't quite know who he is, as was written in the novel. And while Peter Sellers was great (he's great in everything I've seen him in, quite frankly), I thought there was too much of him in this film. Other people agree; I remember reading that a review came out saying that Kubrick should have titled his film Quilty!