| Overall Grade: |
D |
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| Story: |
F |
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| Acting: |
C |
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| Direction: |
D |
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| Visuals: |
B+ |
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Terrible adaption
by CC (movies profile)
Oct 12, 2007
5
of
7 people found this review helpful
After reading the novel their eyes were watching god, I was excited that there was a movie adaption of the novel, since the original novel was so powerful and overall good to read.
Needless to say, I was extremely dissapointed with the film. Although the chronological order of events was the same between both book and movie, the dialogue, events, scenes, etc. were all different. It's not a bad thing that the director took liberty with the plot/script, but in this case, it was way too much. Several key lines in the dialogue, or key events, got changed so much that Janie's (Halle Berry) actions didn't make any sense at all without prior knowledge from the novel. For example, Nanny's conversation with Janie, a powerful catalyst in her life. The impact of it was destroyed by too much imagery (which happened a lot in this film), change in dialogue, extremely bad timing (in terms of actions and lines of speech), and order of events.
Several important themes or key points were also run over or rushed through in this film, for example, Janie running from Logan, Janie's reason for disliking Joe, and why she was attracted to Tea Cake and what made him different. Now I understand between a book and a film, there are huge differences, as a book can communicate thoughts and underlying themes better. But at least the director could've avoided running over these important lines and instead cut out all the sex scenes (which were definitely not the focus of the novel, shame on hollywood for having to add naked scenes in disregard for the novel).
One last note, according to the book, between the beginning (when Janie is a girl), to the end, Janie starts off at 16, and ends up at about 40 or 50. Yet she never changes. Even when with Joe, and they say 20 years pass between them, they don't change at all. Janie criticizes Joe's pot belly. Where? He looks the exact same to me. This inconsistency really bothered me while watching.
Also, if the director bothered to even carefully read this novel, the reason why Janie was attracted to Tea Cake so much was because he was different from the others, in the way that he was friendly, he encouraged her strengths, and he treated Janie like a human being (unlike Joe who treated her as a trophy), this film not only ruined that by not highlighting ANY of these points, but also made Janie seem like a superficial teenager and only attracted to Tea Cake because of his "toned abdomens". Why in the world does hollywood always have to do this?
All in all, this film was a terrible adaption of the novel and I highly advise to read the novel instead of watching this. Oprah Winfrey is wrong, this film is nothing like the book. Zora Neale Hurston would be dissapointed. Shame on hollywood for ruining such a great novel. |
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