Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The movie is never as good as the book!

I bought a copy of "The Wedding Date" by Elizabeth Young. It was originally published as "Asking for Trouble", they changed the name when the movie came out. I read and thoroughly enjoyed it...so I decided that I should watch the movie.

So since I'm cheap, I put the movie on hold at my library. I finally got it on Monday...came home and immediately put it in my DVD player...well after I cleaned the thing. I don't know what these people do to the DVDs they check out from my library...most look as if children are allowed to lick them, perhaps the dog. This one looked like someone rubbed their runny nose over it. BLECH!

I got my first clue that the movie would be different even before I checked it out because the book takes place entirely in ENGLAND and the main character in the movie is Deborah Messing (clearly AMERICAN). And my second clue was that in the book the main character's name is Sophy and in the movie, her name has been changed to Kat. All the names in the movie were changed...(to protect the innocent?)

To cover the entire American/English thing...they've given Kat a different background. Kat and her mother moved to England after her mother married an English man when Kat was very young. They didn't explain why Kat had moved back to America, but it's a good guess that she did so after she was dumped by her fiance. Which is why in the movie Kat hires an escort (Nick) for the wedding.

In the book Sophy hires an escort because she has been lying to her family about the existence of a man in her life, mostly because her mother is trying to keep up appearances with the neighbor. We don't find out that the ex-boyfriend (they weren't engaged in the book) is attending the wedding until Sophy and Dominic/Josh arrive for the wedding.

I just looked at some of the reviews of the movie on Amazon.com... (in the movie link above) where people didn't see any chemistry between Kat & Nick and couldn't figure out where it was that they fell in love. In the book it's pretty obvious as Sophy clearly states over and over that she "fancies the pants" off of Josh.

Okay, I'm gonna stop spoiling the book, because if you would like to read it...leave me a comment. I'll use a random drawing to choose who I mail the book to. Sorry I don't have the movie as I just returned it to the Library.

6 comments:

  1. The book is always better than the movie. Which is why I still haven't seen the Da Vinci Code: I'm determined to read the book first.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree, the books are almost always better, one notable exception, Gone With the Wind, the movie did the book justice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie which exceeded the book in quality. For this reason, I try as best I can to read the book first to get the best possible experience from the story.

    And, as I former librarian, I readily admit that I almost never check out any DVD from the library...if it's not runny nose snot on the DVD then it's the deep penetrating scratches that make me think the patrons have been trying to use their old record players to play the darn things, mistaking them for the almost extinct vinyl records.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The movie you are referring to sounds vaguely familiar to me. I think it came and left the theaters in about a week. I feel that books are always so much better than the movies because the books give us far more detail while allowing us to use our imaginations...and we all know where our imaginations can take us.
    p.s. It's probably a good thing that you don't have that germ infested DVD in your house anymore!

    ReplyDelete
  5. The book is ALWAYS better than the movie... I'd love to read the book, but the last time I got a book to pass on, it got stolen in the mail when I sent it to the next person... you might want to pick someone else...
    LBC

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ooh, I'm always up for a new book. I'll play!

    And the movies are never as good as the books. While I like the Harry Potter movies, for example, I find myself feeling sorry for those who haven't read the book and are missing out on things cut from the film.

    ReplyDelete