I went to see Little Miss Sunshine this weekend, which was fantastic.
However, I was surprised to see that two of the three previews were for movies based on recent books. Both movies looked terrible.
The first apparent stinker, was Little Children based on the book by Tom Perrotta. I picked up Little Children when it came out based solely upon the idea, “hey this is the guy who wrote Election, this is going to be awesome.” It wasn’t. It’s possible that I read this book at the wrong time in my life. I picked up the book within a few months of the birth of my daughter, so maybe I wasn’t ready to settle down with a book that is largely about how morally bankrupt parenting is for our generation. Weirdly, the trailer for the movie was ominously paced as though the movie was a horror film. Can’t tell you what that’s all about.
The second preview was for Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors. The book was a very disturbing memoir, as told by a witty author (according to BGB’s Nitro). The movie trailer, however, appears to be for some other story that is a mad cap romp full of wacky hi-jinks. I kept waiting for the Walking on Sunshine intro music to start.
While I haven’t seen any previews yet, the movie adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis looks like it will at least be in keeping with the graphic novels (based upon these stills). The movie will apparently be in French (Satrapi lives in Paris) with English subtitles, which should ensure that the people who need to see the movie most will stay far, far away.