the movie cant hold a candle to the book!
353200
The movie leaves so much out. I saw the movie first and i just couldn't put the book down. I reccomend reading this one ( its free with kindle unlimited but id certainly pay for it if i needed to.)
1148863
Read The Book. The movie is terrible. They even wrote in scenes not even in the book. The book is so much richer.
3245871
Loved the movie!  But the book was very very deep, could not finish.
2683176
I read the book and enjoyed the story. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't capture the story nearly as well. Too much information and some key characters were left out of the script. The movie is difficult to follow if you did not read the book
881641
At first I was very excited because its one of my favorite movies.. To be honest, the book was very good and you must buy it! Also the book is very little, and the paperback can squeeze. YOU MUST BUY IT NOW!
1931850
Well, to tell you the truth the movie did stay in line with the book, but it had a completely different tone. Book was super slow and was unable to finish it.
3901815
I actually enjoyed the movie much more.  The book strived for philosophical, and ended as an obsesssive rant...the comedy totally missed me, and it hung as a black cloud in my things-to-finish list.
313866
This is one of my all time favorite books ,but I was so disappointed in this version. Had I not seen the movie, I am afraid I would have been lost. The story was difficult to follow and many parts that were an integral part of the story were hard to understand. I think there are better translations of the book.
574555
This adaptation of the book was so off the mark that I don't even know how they can call it "Petals on the Wind".  This book was probably my favorite in the series and this movie did not do it justice at all.  The fact that it picks up ten years after the kids run away from the attic was the first major "what?" moment for me.  It starts off at Paul's funeral.  He died at the end of the book and he was a major character in the whole book.  Just really weird that they would do that.  Why even make a movie at all if it is going to be so different than the book?  The three kids stay on at Paul's house because apparently he left it to them.  Henny is there and she can speak for some reason and doesn't pass away in the movie.

Carrie is in her private school and getting picked on by other girls for what reason?  The actress who played Carrie was very pretty and not really strikingly short like she was in the book.  In fact, the movie never really acknowledged why she was getting picked on. Chris has a long term girlfriend in the movie.  Cathy is probably 25 throughout the whole movie and was she just sitting at Rosencoff ballet school for 10 years waiting to get a break?  That wasn't explained.  Madame Marisha was an afterthought and Georges wasn't in the movie.  Julian just randomly shows up and the actor did an okay job portraying him but it didn't explain why he was so unstable, he just came off as a total brute.  Cathy didn't know him at all and just went to New York and moved in with him.  In the book she already knew him for a few years, graduated high school, then went on to New York.  Madame Zolta didn't exist in the movie.

The whole thing about Julian dying was just implied.  He and Cathy got in a car crash (she wasn't in the car in the book, she was at home after Julian broke her toes) and showed him laying on the pavement - cut to 10 months later.  I don't like how swiftly they sped through Carrie's death.  Then after that Cathy quickly seduces Bart and there was no passion or hatred or anything between both of them.  Cathy gets knocked up by Bart right away, there wasn't must passage of time in this movie, so that made Jory and Bart Jr. only a year apart in age where as in the book they were 4 or 5 years apart.

When Cathy confronts the grandmother, she'd had a stroke but she could talk.  That whole scene was okay but what happened in the book was way more extreme, after all, Cathy went there to get revenge!  The end party scene was pretty anti-climatic, and again, it was just implied that Bart died in the fire.  I wouldn't watch this movie again.  It is impossible to try to cram a 400 page book into 90 minutes and they didn't really even stick to the plot.
1141415
The Princess Bride novel is way better than the movie.  There are vital things that aren't played out in the movie.  For example Buttercup's parents and her upbringing were not even mentioned in the movie.  The  history of the most beautiful women in the world was completely skipped  over.  Being a vital part of the book, the zoo of death was not portrayed  at all.  The movie used a tree for the torture setting, that just wasn't  right.  In the movie Fezzik and Inigo clubbed the albino to find Westley.  Then Inigo used his father's sword to find the tree.  That never happened  in the book, they listened to the screams and followed them to the zoo of  death.  Fezzik and Inigo had to go through much more hardship to find  Westley in the book.  They had to fight all of the floors of the zoo of  death before they reached level five.  This created alot of suspense that  was lacking in the movie.  Overall the book was more suspensefull and  surpassed the movie by far!
1881628
I hate being the one to say that the book was so much better but in this case it was. This movie just cut out way to much. If I hadn't read the book I would have had very little Idea as to what was going on in this movie.
4495486
Let's get a  few things straight here.  First, the book that upon which this movie is based is a wonderful book, one of the best ever written, no doubt, and it has delighted millions of readers over the years.  Second, it is an extremely difficult book to turn into a movie.  Third, the movie will not follow the book exactly, which is too bad, but in some respects understandable.
  However, while I enjoyed the movie and I understand that changes had to be made, I did not enjoy these particular changes themselves.  It seemed to me that the producers and directors of this film sold out the Tolkien ideal in order to dumb the movie down to the lowest common demoninator of movie goers.  This is what irked me the most.  I realize that it is impossible to include all the nuances of each character into a movie, although they did a great job with Gollum.  However, I have never liked the way they have turned Merry and Pippin into semi-coherent idiots and phasing out Eomer and over emphasising Aragorn really hurt the flow of the movie.  Let's face it, the whole Aragorn falling off the cliff scene and dreaming about Arwen was really boring and seemed totally out of place with the rest of the film.  The only reason it was in there was to "attract" female viewers.  In other words, it is just another example of putting a Hollywood Formula into the movie where it was neither needed nor wanted.  The overextended battle of Helm's Deep and the confusing and totally unnecessary portrayal of Faramir seriously dampened the effect of the movie as a whole and are just further examples of the Director inserting the Hollywood Formula to cater to the perceived needs of a dumb audience.
  To summarize, while I understand the complexities of turning such a fantastic and intricate book into a movie, the changes that were made were unnecessary and detracted from the enjoyment of the movie as a whole. Overall, the movie is quite good.  As a comparison to the book, you'll be disappointed because it's obvious that those who are making these movies care only about tried and true Hollywood formulas and will use them at the expense of the far better written word.
1609624
To be fair, I had literally just finished the book when I watched the movie, and adaptations rarely live up to your expectations. I also feel that Cheryl's relationship with her mother and siblings was too underplayed. Gorgeously filmed, but lacking the heart of the book.
4851030
good grief this book is way more scary than the film. I guess it has a lot to do with my imagination as well...it really gets in to the book!
2714381
Because I still liked it even though it was far inferior to the book.  This was one of the first mysteries ever written, I think.  It was a long book, and , having been written during the 18th hundreds, the writing style was very different from today's style. I loved that, but the movie, of course, could not  do that.
526052
Well, that was nothing like the movie - or more accurately - the movie was nothing like the book.

The book is very good on it's own merits. However, most of what's in the book doesn't jive with what they did in the movie. The movie is on TV about once a month it seems, and I enjoy it too but I always get disappointed when they change it so much to make it a movie. Another book that they did that to too much was The Shining. The book is waaay better than the movie and it doesn't even end the same way - not even close.

From now on when it comes to books/movies I think that I'll either A) read the book and never see the movie, or B) see the movie and never read the book.
1208042
After reading the 1984 novel, I was quite excited to see this movie! To my disappointment, it was an absolute slaughter of the dialogue, scenes and even characters portrayed in the novel! My recommendation is to avoid it at all costs, the book is 10x better!