Terrible adaptation

Rating: 4/10 (1 November 2013)

I can't for the life of me understand how someone can say they read the books and enjoyed this movie. The movie deviates so much from the book that I can only assume these people haven't read the book since they were a kid 10+ years ago.
The movie makes soooo many terrible changes for absolutely no reason at all. Some of the changes I despised, but I could at least see why it was necessary for time constraints - but there are plenty of changes that were just idiotic and unnecessary. Bean and Petra in particular were brutal to watch as their personalities were so radically different from the characters in the book; they may have read lines word-for-word from the book, Bean was displayed as a sociable joker, and Petra a soft- spoken empath. Anyone who has read the book would see how much these characters deviated from the book. And don't even get me started on the casting for Bonzo.
If you've never touched the book, or you have a terrible memory, then maybe the movie could be decent. Ford does play an admirable colonel Graff, and even the child actors are quite good - although the characters they are playing are not at all like the characters in the book (but that's no reason to critique their performance).
Do not watch this disaster if you're a fan of the book.