Sense and Sensibility is my favorite Jane Austen movie adaptation. I know how serious that sounds (when Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy is in the running he hardly ever loses) but I've watched it so much more than Firth's six hour epic. It's on my short list of homework movies.
Turning books into movies is a tricky business.
Do you add extra excitement if it's a slow book about relationships? How do you shorten a 500 page Harry Potter novel but retain the little pieces that make everything make sense at the end of the series? How do you take the intense moments from The Hunger Games or Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and translate them into something kids can watch/adults can stomach?
One thing I like about movie adaptations is that it helps entice people into reading. Our close friends have young kids and we read The Hunger Games together in anticipation of the movie coming out- we read the City of Ember as well and we're going to rent the movie to watch. I know girls who haven't read a single book reading the entire anthology of Jane Austen. Boys who will read anything that involves WWII after watching Band of Brothers.
My dad says the only book he's read that was worse than the movie was Forrest Gump (he does a wicked Forrest Gump impression as well).
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