The Help

Books are almost always better than their movie counterparts, I think that is universally agreed upon. It is hardly a fair comparison. Movies have to condense a grip of events into roughly two hours and something always seems to get lost in translation. They are also battling your imagination, which they are always going to lose. They would have to cast someone better than the perfect character you created in your brain, make sure to include all of your favorite parts of the book and they would need to keep whatever central theme you decided the book had. And after all that, you would have a movie just equal to the book, not one that surpasses it.

I can think of a couple of movies that are at least as entertaining as the book. The Princess Bride comes to mind. It probably helps that the movie was almost nothing like the book so it avoided most of the comparisons. Pride and Prejudice is one where I actually prefer the movie to the book, although I know I am in the minority on that one. How could I have possibly created a better Mr. Darcy than Colin Firth?

So, I started reading the Help a few weeks ago. I really wanted to have it read before the movie came out so the casting director's choices wouldn't superimpose themselves over the characters I had already created in my mind's eye. I only made it about halfway through the book before I saw the movie.

I thought the casting was inspired. There wasn't a single person I would have changed (very rare for me). They were obvious caricatures meant to represent a type, but I think that was the point.

There were a lot of timeline inaccuracies, probably more obvious to me since I was actually in the middle of the book. These didn't bother me - I could see that it was done to help move the story along and make it more fluid.

The crux: very well done adaptation of a very enjoyable book. Warning: bring kleenex (I bawled my face off).

What movies based on books do you like?