By Mandy Bates
On any given weekend, “Where the Heart Is” will be playing on Lifetime, Oxygen or any of the other “chick flick” stations. And that’s where I always am, vegged out on the couch watching it. It’s one of my favorite movies. So when I found out it was based on a book, I couldn’t believe it! Books are always a hundred times better than movies! It took me forever to get a copy of Billie Letts’ book, and it was even an Oprah book club selection! This had to be great, right?
Wrong. Of all the books that have been made into movies, this has to be the worst. Book-wise of course, because the worst MOVIE to come out of a BOOK was sadly Queen of the Damned, based on Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. But never, never, never ever has the movie been better than the book. Sure, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter movie had a better ending than the one in the book, but overall the book won by a landslide. I love all the Harry Potter movies (except GOF), but the books are much preferred. I’ve read each book so many times that they’ve come unbound, but I’ve only watched the movies a couple times each (except DH because no one will go with me!!!) So imagine my sadness when Where the Heart Is the book turned out to be so horrible.
It’s really not very well written, the characters have no dimension. Forney never stops being a nut job, Lexie never stops being horny, Sister and Mr. Sprock never get much more than they do in the movie, although Moses has a wife and father in the book. They seem like they COULD have some depth if allowed. One scene came close to being written to the point where I could actually forget that I was reading and get lost, but not quite. And when Novalee kisses the 17-year-old boy she met when he was ten, I almost puked. Even though she only did it because his birthday was in three minutes and he’d never been kissed before.
And Willy Jack… at least in the movie, he gets some sort of redemption, albeit a very small amount. In the book, there’s no way to give a damn about this guy, even though he takes up a large chunk of the pages. His intentions all along are evil, from the minute they get in the car till he’s laying in the hospital bed. The book tries to redeem him right here, saying he knew Americus’s name and that he knew from almost the beginning where they were. But that just makes me dislike him more. I didn’t feel sorry for him when he got arrested for something he didn’t do, when he got raped in prison, when the doctor tortured him, when he got lost in drugs and alcohol, not at all. He was too one-dimensional and flat. And the ending of the book, don’t even get me started on that! I won’t say, because I know some of you are going to give the book a chance anyway, and I don’t want to ruin it for you, but it’s not like in the movie, although some of the lines are used word-for-word.
I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to enjoy my once-favorite movie anymore after reading this crap. Major kudos to whomever adapted the book into screenplay. I guess we’ll find out the next time Oxygen channel airs Where the Heart Is, which will probably be in a couple hours. Or definitely within a couple days. It’s on all the time!
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