Let's take a witty, hilarious, smart, sweet book and turn it into mediocre Hollywood *beep*
Mission accomplished.
Part of the problem is Michael Cera is completely miscast as Nick. In the book he's far more naturally aggressive.
And Sheeni is far more desirable / exasperating / crazy in the book.
And the added dialogue that's not in the book is terrible.
C.D. Payne deserved so much better.
I have a suggestion. Go read the book.
If the book is so much more satisfying and the movie was such a disappointment to you and offended you so deep down in that broken little heart of yours, then deny it's existence and enjoy your literature.
Christ.
If you have a problem with people complaining about a film being unworthy of the book it is based off of, then don't read the posts people write about this feeling!
Ta-da! Everyone can get by.
+1,000,000
It's too bad they messed it up so badly, because it is a brilliant book.
Michael Cera is completely wrong for the part, he's far too wimpy and bland, Sheeni the same. She should have been messing with his head at every turn. The director barely even touched on what makes the book so great: the constant duplicitous, cruel, and sarcastic "mind####" games Nick and Sheeni play on each other. The whole Carlotta bit, a major part of the book, is glossed over into one ridiculous scene at the end. They should have just left it out.
A smaller part of the reason I enjoyed the book so much is that I was living in Berkeley at the time, and spending my summers in Ukiah, so I really had a good sense of place. It was so obvious the movie wasn't even made in CA, much less Berkeley or Ukiah (it was Michigan).
Also, have you read the full book?
My first and second reads were the Doubleday paperback version when it came out ('95?). I sent it to a friend in Mongolia (Peace Corps) and never saw it again. I wanted to read it recently, so in hunting for a used copy I found an original Aivia Press hardcover. I did some research, I didn't realize that the original was self-published by Payne, and that when Doubleday bought the rights they heavily edited the book.
The excerpts are available as a separate book, but I figured it'd be easier to just get the original hardcover rather than reading 2 books and trying to make sense of the "Ok, now insert sentence from book #2 into book #1" endless eyeball tennis match.
If you haven't read the full book, I suggest you do because it's twice as brilliant. Doubleday left a lot off the table, Nick is quite a bit worse than he is in the cleaned-up Doubleday version. Unfortunately they're a bit expensive now, I had to pay over $50 on Amazon. :(
@jonathan-lee98: I have the same suggestion for you: read the full book. If you do, you'll understand completely this topic and why this movie should not have been released the way it is.
PS: The only "movie from book" I've seen where I thought both were brilliant, where the director/actors really understood the book, and seeing the movie was a viable alternative to reading, was Mysterious Skin.
Very disturbing though.
The version I read was 500 pages long so I have to assume it was the unabridged version.
shareI'm not sure if the 500 pages is indicative or not of what version due to different font sizes, but the original book is hardcover with a cartoon cover of a Berkeley street burning, and was published by Aivia. It's 503 pages. If the book you read was not hardcover then it's not the original, if it is hardcover then it certainly could be.
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