In yesterday’s New York Times Book Review, the bookends column asked two writers to vote for their favorite movie adaptation of a book (see link here). The first was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the psychedelic 1970s version with Gene Wilder, not the ultra creepy Tim Burton movie); the second was the Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore  version of The End of the Affair. While I’m on the fence about Willy Wonka, I agree that the  The End of the Affair movie actually enhanced the book for me (a rare thing indeed in a movie adaptation).

So I got to thinking of all the great and the not so great movie versions of books over the years and it’s obvious that it’s a precariously thing indeed turning a beloved book into a critically successful movie (let alone one that does well at the box office). Last night I finally watched 12 Years A Slave – but having not read the book on which it’s based I can’t really comment on how faithful or moving an adaptation it was. It was certainly a good, moving film – though one that certainly put a bit of a dampener on my pre Mother’s Day mood (but then so did the Colorado weather – snow in May is never a good thing!).

My vote for some of the best movie adaptations of books include: The Last of the Mohicans (though, to be fair, that book was a bit of a hard slog and Daniel Day Lewis was enough for me to give it my vote anyway!), The Age of Innocence (another Daniel Day Lewis movie), Atonement (I actually preferred the movie to the book, but that’s probably because I’m a Philistine!) and finally The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Sadly, as far as the Lord of the Rings movie series is concerned, I didn’t feel the same way at all about the movie adaptation of The Hobbit. I recently read the book aloud to my boys and it was depressing to realize, after about ten minutes into the first movie, that there was no way they could watch the movie version. Not only was it way too violent, but it had also killed off all the charm of the book with both silliness as well as gore (not to mention dragging the whole thing out for three movies!). There are, sadly, many, many movies on my ‘worst adaptation’ list. The Scarlett Letter (shudder!), The Time Traveller’s Wife (another shudder!), The DaVinci Code (ugh!), and Ender’s Game (fail!) to name just a few…

For my kids, another bomb in the book to movie department was The Golden Compass. Now even I admit, Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials Trilogy has some major philosophical hurdles to deal with as far as mass movie consumption is concerned. But still, this was such a major disappointment that even my boys (who did enjoy the books) could only shrug at the end of the movie. I’m just thankful we’d read the book first, otherwise I fear my boys would never have wanted to even open the first page after seeing the movie!

So what about you all? What is your favorite movie adaptation of a book? What, in your opinion, is one of the worst?