inthequietsecretnight

This movie is based on the John Irving novel A Prayer for Owen Meany. It's a somewhat sappy but wonderful story about miracles and destiny, faith and doubt. It's three kids coming of age story, one of them very odd and special. It is well worth reading. Most of all it explores the mystery of life and how we perceive it and maybe whether that perception is even our choice (in our hands) or not.

If my memory serves, the movie focuses on a small part of the book, I think a bus crash. This technique can work well in film as so often there's too much book to cover in a couple hours. One of my favorite examples of taking a tiny part of a novel and making a good film of it is Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis. That was a great movie, it felt like the book and Anthony Hopkins was just right.

Simon Birch, it's poop. My understanding is that John Irving asked to have his name and reference to the novel removed from the movies credits. I don't blame him. Somehow I sat through most of the movie but near the end, during Jim Carey's soliloquy, when some people in the theater were actually crying for that hack job of a flick, I got up and walked out. I walked out of one of those doors at the side of the screen and made sure to let a little light shine in as I left, hoping to wake up those crying idiots. Maybe that was rude but what I wanted to do was shout, "read the effing book!!!"

That's my advice to you, read the book. Hell, you'd be more entertained reading the Cliff Notes (do those still exist? I never read 'em, figure those are for people who cry during crappy movies) for it. Do not watch Simon Birch. And if you did and are somehow under the belief that it's a good movie, READ THE BOOK!!! Simon Birch, I hate that movie.