November 6th, 2007
6. All The King's Men (2006)
When this version of Robert Penn Warren's powerful staple about abuse within the American political system was first conceived, it seemed like the stencil-work on its Oscars could safely be done in advance. Warren's thinly veiled take on Huey Long, the charismatic Louisiana populist whose gubernatorial reign was tainted by demagoguery and corruption, has obvious resonances in today's political climate. Add to that a sterling pedigree, including writer-director Steven Zaillian, who won an Oscar for adapting Schindler's List, and a murderer's row of thespians (Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, James Gandolfini, and Patricia Clarkson, among others), and the project seemed like it was in good hands. (And if anyone needed a road map, they could always turn to Robert Rossen's superb 1949 film version with Broderick Crawford.) Yet it would be hard to imagine a more leaden adaptation; the film just sits there like a dead fish that did most of its flapping in pre-production. The cast struggles haplessly with their Louisiana accents (a never-worse Penn and Gandolfini being the most egregious), every scene drags on several beats too long, and James Horner's brutal percussion score (bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum… clang!) makes for an oppressive exclamation point.
7. The Human Stain (2003)
Okay, armchair casting agents: Think of the perfect actor to play a septuagenarian professor who's a half-Jewish, light-skinned African-American. Now think of the perfect actress to play his lover—a dowdy, illiterate, dirt-poor janitor who's half his age. So… were you thinking Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman? No? Because those were the leads selected for The Human Stain, a perversely miscast adaptation of Philip Roth's fiery novel about identity politics and the absurdities of academia. It's easy enough to buy Hopkins as a college professor, but it's the character's fluid, ever-shifting sense of self that's most important, especially once he uses the unfortunate word "spooks" (as in "ghosts") to describe two absent students who turn out to be African-American. Kidman fares better as a janitor, but the world's most glamorous actress can only be de-glammed so much. Together, they're a major distraction in a movie already burdened by the difficult work of adapting Roth's jaundiced vision, which continues to stymie every filmmaker that tries it.
8. The Hours (2002)
Michael Cunningham's 1999 novel The Hours weaves together the stories of three women's lives with the care of a fugue. Themes repeat, echo, and get reversed, and the subtlety of his prose only strengthens the book's emotional impact. The inexplicably acclaimed Stephen Daldry adaptation from 2002 knows nothing of subtlety. It pounds the material into powder with over-the-top visuals and overreaching performances. And, in an odd twist, the film's one truly affecting scene—John C. Reilly's quiet monologue about finding a post-war paradise in America—isn't in the book at all. Maybe they should have started with that and thrown out the rest.
9. Stardust (2007)
Some book-to-screen adaptations are bad movies, plain and simple. Stardust, however, is a mildly entertaining film that all but falls apart when held up to its source. Where Neil Gaiman's beloved original is a brisk, crystalline fairytale, Matthew Vaughn's version is flabby and plodding; alchemically morphing charm into ham, the director squashes characters to a single dimension and turns Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer loose to swallow scenery whole. Even worse, their gluttonous mugging nulls the spell that Gaiman's story casts, and it overpowers the already anemic chemistry between leads Charlie Cox and Claire Danes. Stardust the novel is richer and darker, but the movie's weakness doesn't boil down to a typical Hollywood sugarcoating. Instead, it feels like an overextended Vaughn—and even Gaiman himself, who suffered years of frustrating development before green-lighting and ultimately blessing the film—simply settled for good enough.
10. Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Throughout his life, beloved children's author Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel was notoriously reluctant to license the contents of his books for movies or toys; aside from a handful of animated cartoons, including the wonderful TV special "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" by his friend Chuck Jones, the Seuss brand didn't extend that far beyond its original sources. All that changed when Geisel died in 1991 and the licensing went to his widow, who green-lit Ron Howard's feature-length, live-action version starring Jim Carrey in the title role. The concise storytelling and typically delightful rhymes, so well-preserved in Jones' animated short, went out the window, and the exaggerated design of Seuss' book was amplified into a garish nightmare of color and noise. Decked out like a green, feral, pot-bellied dog, Carrey overplays Seuss' diabolical Grinch with his aggressive slapstick, which is separated from his usual rubber-faced yahoo routine only in its mean-spiritedness. And in case our hearts weren't warmed by the decency and resolve of the Whos down in Whoville, there's a sappy ballad by Faith Hill over the end credits. (Shockingly, Mike Myers' take on The Cat In The Hat three years later was even worse, but mainly because it used this film as a template.)
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