Books on the Big Screen

In the past couple weeks, I've seen two movies based on books that I read and enjoyed, "Water for Elephants" by Sarah Gruen and "Something Borrowed" by Emily Giffin. Both movies were pretty good, although I definitely liked "Water for Elephants" better. I thought the actors did a great job and the on-screen depiction of the story, a romantic drama set against the backdrop of a Depression-era traveling circus that features a very special elephant, was not too far off from what I had pictured in my mind while reading.

"Something Borrowed" was not bad either, but the story itself is a bit more superficial than "Water for Elephants." The whole time I was watching it, I kept thinking two things. 1. How much the actor who plays Dex (Colin Egglesfield) resembled a young, slightly better-looking Tom Cruise. And 2. How anyone who really has a problem with cheating on significant others would probably be uncomfortable watching this movie. A couple months ago, I watched "Eat, Pray, Love" with two friends. At the beginning, Julia Roberts' character is sleeping with James Franco's character before she's officially divorced from her husband, and my friends were appalled by her behavior. In "Something Borrowed," Dex is carrying on a relationship with both Darcy (his fiancee) and Rachel (his fiancee's best friend) at the same time, and Dex, Rachel and their friend Ethan keep the affair from Darcy (who's a stuck-up, self-centered and unlikeable character, and arguably doesn't deserve Dex). So if my friends were upset about the actions of a near-divorced wife in "Eat, Pray, Love," the whole basis of "Something Borrowed" would likely be offensive to them. And somehow, the actions of the characters do seem a bit more sleazy and low when broadcast in living color right in front of your face than contained in the pages of a book.

The next book-based movie I'm excited to see is "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2." A friend just asked me if I was planning to re-read the book before seeing the conclusion to the movie saga, and I explained to her that not long ago I finally came to the realization that I enjoy a movie so much more if I haven't read the book recently. I find that if I've read the book to close to the movie premiere, I sit there nit-picking every single change or discrepancy. By not re-reading the book, I can view the movie as a separate entity and have a much better movie-watching experience.