Mmm.....

No, I thought the same thing. I figured there might be a "twist" at the end of the movie but I never figured it was that he'd turn into her doormat.

This is my main problem with the screenplay. If you'd read the book, you wouldn't be asking these questions. The screenplay, although written by the book's author, fails to adequately explore this. Or so many other things crucial to the story.

I had written a long post a few months ago explaining my opinion, so I'll just paste it here:


I have also read the book several times and saw the film twice. The film did not do the book justice. Llke Scarlett O'Hara, you can't possibly understand Amy from watching the movie. What's going on in her head is more telling than what comes out of her mouth. Same with Nick. He's a frighteningly hateful misogynist in the book (what goes through his mind is scary), but not in the movie. His father is barely touched upon in the movie, yet you can't really "get" Nick until you know his father... and the movie fails to allow you to do that. If you have not read the book, you don't know Nick at all, and it's understandable why you would see him as some poor schlub, an average Joe Nice Guy who just cheated on his wife (oops!) and that was his one flaw. NO. He's a pretty horrible person disguised as Aww Shucks Pretty Boy. But the movie only shows you the Aww Shucks side of him.

The movie did not portray the psychological aspect of their relationship; the mind games, the constant shifting of the balance of power due to those mind games, etc. To me it was the crux of the story, but the movie really didn't go there. It also left out important characters and spent too much time on inconsequential ones. Hilary Handy was missing. Talking to her was what made Nick really figure out he was being framed. They included Tommy O'Hara (but why make their meeting in person?) but left out the chilling note Amy sent him afterwards, gloating about how she'd set him up. That, plus the fact that she did the same thing to Hilary and sent her a similar note, I think were crucial turning points in the story that helped Nick see the pattern and understand how he was being framed, and how long/carefully she planned things (and why he didn't believe her story about Desi). Those two people and what happened to them were integral to the story, yet they only included one of them... and left out the denouement.

Other things were missing or misrepresented too, like Shawna Kelly. They totally misrepresented their interactions--she was all over him in the book, yet in the movie they met once and she angrily turned on him immediately... for an action that never even happened in the book. And OMG, that whole stupid made-up engagement scene at the book party... WTF?! I really could have done without that. It added nothing to the story. They should have cut that out and added the full Hilary and Tommy stories instead.

Also, the drunken video he made with the blogger girl was left out entirely... meanwhile, that's when the tide turned and people started liking him, and when Amy got sucked back in, thinking he loved her again. I thought the video was important, as it made people start believing him, and also started shifting the balance of power for the first time... he outwitted Amy. I also didn't like how they never let on that Nick started falling for her again via the clues--and she with him, after the video--before he realized what they were really about.

Toward the end, they never explored something I thought was pretty important… how Nick started to realize, to his horror, that Amy was right about the two of them being two halves of one twisted whole, and how he'd never be happy with anyone "ordinary." That they were stuck with each other in one long, eternal hell on Earth of a relationship. Like it or not. Instead, they portrayed him as angry at her the entire film, with no inner conflicts. In reality (the book), he was thinking about how he was falling back in love with Amy WHILE half-naked Andie was on top of him on Go's sofa, and was pushing Andie off him because of it. None of that back-and-forth of emotions is included in the movie... yet it's important to the story. This would have been a very different movie if it had been faithful to the book. I'll never understand why they found it necessary to change a story that resonated for a REASON and turn it into a Lifetime movie.

And don't even get me started on the ending.