Our first class discussion on one of the required readings concluded last week and boy was it a fun class. There was a general consensus from the class about the ups and massive pitfalls of the book The Orchid Thief (1998) by Susan Orlean, and its film adaptation titled.. Adaptation (2002). Which I can't decide if the film title was a joke, a play on words, or trying to be witty. I'm not sure if I'll ever know.
I am going to start with the book because I want to keep with the format of my previous posts that I did on both book and film. I'm going to try and employ some of the theories and methods of adaptation studies that we have been learning about in class, but I am going to try and not include too much extra class stuff because I want to try and stick to just the reviews as I have done since the start of my getting-back-into-reading-adventure.
First, I didn't really like this book. Probably not something I would have chosen to read of my own free-will, but because it was for class, here we are. The only thing I liked about the book was that I learned some neat stuff about orchids that I never knew. That was the only thing.
There is many a thing I didn't like about the book, and in conjunction, the movie as well. For example, there was no character development. You learned a lot about the people that Susan Orlean talked to, particularly John Laroche, but it was all history-of-the-person type stuff and there was really no story or character arc for him throughout the novel's many many pages of information on orchids. All the other 'characters' - all real life people by the way - were never fleshed out either except for their backstory/history of why they were all in the orchid business. The book is about 'passion' but I felt like Susan didn't dig deep enough into all the people she met's thoughts, feelings, desires, hopes, dreams or ambitions. It was all a bunch of this happened to this person and now they're obsessed with orchids or this person bought or was gifted their first orchid in blah blah year and now they're obsessed with orchids now too.
Secondly, because there was very little to no character development, there was hardly any story or plot at all. So much orchid information, and orchid history, and history of Florida and swamps and real estate. This book might as well have been a freaking textbook. I think I would have accepted it more if it was.
However, I have to take into consideration that Susan is by employ a journalist and not an author. On that point, I do have to give her props on her research of orchids and due-diligence of getting her facts straight. So, there is that.
Very few people in my class liked the book, and they mostly just liked the orchid info, or the parallels to art and nature and passion and beauty that do come up in it. The overall consensus was towards dislike, and our professor wasn't really surprised; which was funny.
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Now... the movie... where do I even start?
I have to use the words of the one girl in my class: "two hours of a sad wank." I agree! This movie had big names, got nominated for Academy Awards, has a 91% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a 85% Popcorn Flick rating and it is freaking horrible! Aside from like three people, my whole class couldn't believe what they were watching.
It had no character development, same as the book, and some of the main characters weren't even characters in the book! The whole film was about Nick Cage's character, Charlie, trying to adapt The Orchid Thief book into a movie. The plot was about film adaptation and not even about the plot of the book. Parts of the book plot were in there, but the movie was pretty much done with what happened in the book halfway through and the second half was a complete and total gong-show mess of crap dialogue and Hollywood tropes. It turned the whole movie into a stereo-typical thriller and went completely off the rails.
The ending was completely made up and had NOTHING to do with the book at all. I hated it. It made no sense. Basically they took the words of the 'Hollywood exec' at the start of film: "Wouldn't it be nice if they fell in love?" and ran with it through a swamp, car chase, guns, drugs, murder plots and and alligator attack. I mean, to be fair, the book doesn't really have an ending either... it just sort of ends and that's it. So, I guess they had to do something with the movie.
My rant in class about this book and movie was quite lengthy and my professor, when I was done, actually asked me if I was sure I didn't have anything else to say. *deep breath*
The last thing I am going to say about this whole debacle is this: There is a quote that Donald says to Charlie in the swamp; "You are what you love, not what loves you." Almost the exact same quote, minus one word change, appears in a Fall Out Boy song Save Rock & Roll and the line is sung by the impeccable Elton John. I scoured the internet trying to find where the quote came from, and to my dismay, it originated with this disastrous movie and I now have no faith left in humanity. Such a great quote to come out of such a crap film.
#endrant
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