One of the best of the 90's. (Faint praise)

Rating: 8/10 (19 October 2000)

When I first read the book in '89, I was stunned. I read it four more times in a month. I heard that spielberg was going to make the film version and I thought: Will this be the spielberg of "Raiders" or the spielberg of "Hook"? We got a bit of both, I'm afraid. Half of the book was chucked, with new stuff slapped in. I felt the heart of the book was gone, replaced by scenes for people with short attention spans. What was left of the book was fabulous, I'll admit. This is heads above the sequel, which was like a filmed video game. "Run this way!" "Run back!" The less said about it the better. I'll do a seperate review on it. The best films of the '90's were: Toy Story, Braveheart, Jurassic Park, Michael Collins, Iron Giant & Beauty and the Beast. The rest were a pretty sorry lot, indicative of the sad trend that films have been following since the inception of the MPAA ratings. That's another story. It could have been better. It could have been like the book. Rating: 8 out of 10.