7/20/2005 11:52:00 AM|||Garnet|||

I watched the movie version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil last night. It sucked. I had seen it many years ago but didn't remember anything about it. So I read and loved the book earlier this month and, after having toured Savannah, I wanted to see the film again.

AWFUL. Slow. Boring. Terrible acting (and not just from the people in the film who weren't even actual actors...you could tell the actual characters from the actors for sure). Not to mention they completely chopped up the storyline. Jim Williams had FOUR murder trials, not just one. Everything else was all jacked up. A lot of it was directly from the story but all moved around in odd places. And what really bugged me was that Joe Odom and Mandy Hillis repeatedly said throughout the book, "When this book gets famous and they make a movie out of it, we want to play ourselves in the film!" But they didn't! Clint Eastwood cast his own daughter in the role of Mandy. And she was awful. Bah. And no, there was no romance between John and Mandy.

Granted, the author of the book had been approached to write the screenplay and he said that he had spent eight years working on the book...the screenplay would probably kill him. That's understandable, I guess.

What I did like about the movie:
Kevin Spacey's portrayal of Jim Williams. He does look almost identical to the real guy and his southern accent and mannerisms were dead on. Unfortunately, I have seen him act even better in movies like KPAX and Usual Suspects. He could've put even more into this role.

A young Jude Law plays Danny ("Billy" in the movie). He gets shot really early in the movie but it's definitely him acting like a punkass hillbilly boy!

Some of the real people in the story played either themselves or similar roles in the movie: Williams' lawyer played the judge in the murder trial (clearly a terrible actor!), Jerry Spence played himself as the gay friend who cuts everyone's hair at Joe Odom's parties, The Lady Chablis played herself magnificently!

Seeing the houses, streets, pictures, art, etc that I had seen during our tour of Savannah. It was cool to look at the backgrounds of the scenes and say, "HEY! I've been there! I saw that! I walked through that hall!"

Okay, that's it. I'm climbing off my soapbox now. Didn't mean to get up on there in the first place! What it all comes down to is this: if you like to read and haven't read it yet...READ THE BOOK! It's awesome and good for some hearty laughs (especially the parts with Chablis!). Skip the movie. It's worthless.

As Forrest Gump once said, "And that's all I have to say about that."

|||112188252373936246|||The Midnight Movie