They Got the Fashion Right, At Least

Grrr. I certainly understand when Hollywood needs to make a commercial movie and certain aspects of a book don't fit their mold but it makes me crazy. I just saw "The Devil Wears Prada" DVD and I could not believe how different it was from the book! I mean, it was a good, entertaining movie about fashion and a girl trying to make it in the big city but it was not the same story I read years ago. For one thing, Miranda Priestly is made to be a sympathetic character in the end, epecially in the way she helps Andrea to get a job. In the book, Andy didn't just walk away from Miranda in Paris, she cussed her out. In order to survive this seemingly insurmountable problem, she wrote a story about working for an impossible boss in the fashion world and gets her story published. She also has a best friend/roommate who in the movie is omitted. Actually, the African American artist from the movie has the name Lily but in the book Lily is white and a Russian literature major. She is also an alcoholic who ends up in a coma and this is what finally drives Andy to leave her job, while in Paris, but not before her boyfriend Alex (not Nate) has to plead with her on the phone. Obviously this means she never breaks up with her boyfriend in the book and does not sleep with the writer she meets in NY and encounters in Paris. Finally, Emily is not her friend and so Andy does not bestow upon her those wonderful Paris clothes. Instead, she sells them (and purses and shoes and belts) to pay her rent.

It's rare I guess to see a movie that has stayed faithful to a book but one really good example is "Gone With the Wind". They really got it! "Less Than Zero", not so much. "Harry Potter" flicks also play around a lot with plotlines. "The Lord of the Ring" trilogy was pretty good as well. "The First Wives Club" was another movie that really strayed from the book because the book had some darker moments not suitable for comedy. I have yet to watch "The Color Purple" but I read it in junior high and loved it then. I'm pretty sure Steven Speilberg stuck to it. But who knows? And Rafael says "Running with Scissors" was a disaster. Chick lit books are being made into movies all the time, some of them for TV only. Believe me, though, if you think chick lit is lite and fluffy in itself, the movies made from them are 10 times worse!