David Nicholls's perceptive chronicle of wasted youth has been hastily transferred to the big screen as a banal romcom
Return of the romcom ... Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway in Lone Scherfig's adaptation of David Nicholls's book One Day. Photograph: Focus Features
The announcement that a hugely successful book is to become a film often provokes dismay. We're usually warned that the outcome is bound to appal devoted readers and disgust detached critics. In fact, such fears have tended to prove unfounded since Gone with the Wind. In our own era, adaptations of JRR Tolkien, Stephen King, Ian Fleming, Stieg Larsson, Jane Austen, Stephenie Meyer and JK Rowling have aroused more delight than complaint.
The prospects for One Day looked particularly encouraging: author David Nicholls actually conceived the original book in pictures. Nonetheless, the film hasn't hit the spot. Those who've read the book seem less than ecstatic; some of those who haven't are derisive. And an opening at ninth place in the US box office top 10 was hardly what was hoped for.
Cue, you might have expected, protests that moronic Hollywood producers ripped the sacred text from its British begetter's hands, dumbed it down, dumped it on to a rubbish director and cast a brainless starlet as the lead. But no. Nicholls himself wrote the script, the director, Lone Scherfig, is a European arthouse darling and the actors are respected troupers. Something else must have gone wrong.
There's a bit of puzzlement about just what. Poor Anne Hathaway and her accent have been expected to bear what seems an unlikely amount of the blame. Still, it was only to be expected that attention would also focus on the film's most unusual feature, its 20-year-span-with-annual-snapshots structure.
To some who haven't read the book, this looks like a pointless gimmick. Yet on paper it works just fine, as a million purchasers in Britain alone would doubtless testify. Shoehorning this device into a mere 108 minutes of screen time seems to have stopped it doing its job. But what exactly was that job?
Full story at The Guardian.
The prospects for One Day looked particularly encouraging: author David Nicholls actually conceived the original book in pictures. Nonetheless, the film hasn't hit the spot. Those who've read the book seem less than ecstatic; some of those who haven't are derisive. And an opening at ninth place in the US box office top 10 was hardly what was hoped for.
Cue, you might have expected, protests that moronic Hollywood producers ripped the sacred text from its British begetter's hands, dumbed it down, dumped it on to a rubbish director and cast a brainless starlet as the lead. But no. Nicholls himself wrote the script, the director, Lone Scherfig, is a European arthouse darling and the actors are respected troupers. Something else must have gone wrong.
There's a bit of puzzlement about just what. Poor Anne Hathaway and her accent have been expected to bear what seems an unlikely amount of the blame. Still, it was only to be expected that attention would also focus on the film's most unusual feature, its 20-year-span-with-annual-snapshots structure.
To some who haven't read the book, this looks like a pointless gimmick. Yet on paper it works just fine, as a million purchasers in Britain alone would doubtless testify. Shoehorning this device into a mere 108 minutes of screen time seems to have stopped it doing its job. But what exactly was that job?
Full story at The Guardian.
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