LJ Idol Presents:

In my opinion, most novels are way too long to be adapted to film satisfactorily. Someone up this thread mentioned that all of Stephen King's books made crappy movies. I tend to agree with 3 exceptions - Stand By Me and The Stand. But these were not standard books or movies - Stand By Me was based on a short story, which is much easier to make into a manageable length movie, and the others were a TV miniseries. Yes, TV miniserieses (yes, I just made up a word)can be pretty badly done, but personally, I enjoyed both of these.

That being said, I think a lot of books to movies can be enjoyed just on their own, not in comparison to the book itself. I love the Harry Potter series - both the books and the movies. The characters looked EXACTLY like I pictured them in my head, which is usually my biggest problem with books made into films. The movies were definitely missing a lot of the details that are in the books, but I still found them enjoyable in their own right.