*Warning: I use the word “book” a lot in this post. Go figure.

In our strep throat stupor, we watched the movie, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” which claims to be based on the book by the same name. The title is about the only thing they have in common.

I’m 34 years old and shouldn’t still be disappointed or annoyed by these cinematic disasters. I’ve never seen a movie made from a book that was better than the book. I even have a friend who refuses to see movies based on her favorite books because it just aggravates her. Maybe I should adopt her philosophy.

I’m tired of movies claiming to be based on books, using the title to sell movie tickets, and then the story told on screen relating in no way to the actual book. In this case, there were only images from the book – a pancake draped over a school building; a gigantic, yellow Jello mold; boats made of bread; an open-ceiling restaurant; and of course, food falling from the sky.

Danielle reviewed the movie on Mom’s the Word back in September when it was released in theaters, and she came to this conclusion – weird. I concur. Maybe if I wasn’t so overwhelmed with its weirdness, I’d cut it some slack on not sticking with the book at all.

I mean, Chicken Brent? Really?! A cooked chicken eats a grown man … that’s all I’ll say. My husband says I might be overreacting to the whole Chicken Brent thing. It could be my general disdain for poultry, but I think it’s gross.

Tags: children's book, classic, movie, thumbs down

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Books on film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.