21

I detailed my struggles in getting the movie 21 from Redbox last weekend. Well, I was persistent in trying to get it again this weekend, and it paid off this afternoon, so I sat down and watched it during the wee morning hours - in Beijing, that is, when there's nothing going on at the Olympics.

I'm not a big movie person, so it's rare for me to really make a point of seeing a particular movie. The reason I was keenly interested in this particular one is that the movie is based on Bringing Down The House, which I read and reviewed several months ago - actually right about the time the movie was playing in the theatres.

As I've mentioned previously, up until last fall, I wasn't much of a reader, so this was the first time in quite some time (in fact, I'm not sure that I remember another time) that I had seen a movie after having read the book it was based on. People always say that the book is better, and it makes sense. Books are hundreds of pages, which gives ample time for character and plot development, and tons of detail. If a movie hits 2 hours (as 21 did, just barely), it's getting on the long side. So, I certainly didn't doubt those kinds of observation, but I was interested to observe it for myself.

Man, was it accurate in this case. While the premise and the meat of the story was taken from the book, the plot lines and character development were chopped pretty badly, almost to the point of being beyond recognition. I guess I just never realized how much you'd have to cut from a 300 page book to get it into a 2 hour movie. Where the book's story was involved, layered, and full of intrigue, the movie stayed very much on the surface, and the storyline around the ending was completely re-done for a more "movie friendly" ending.

I really wish I could have had the ability to compartmentalize the movie and view it without the natural connection to the book, because I feel like I would have found it to be a very good movie prior to reading the book. However, that's pretty much impossible, so this will always, in my mind, be a movie that failed pretty badly to live up to a great book.