The movie was okay, but the book was so much better.

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2018)

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (OFOCN) is a movie that was released in 1975; it is based off a book bearing the same name by Ken Kesey and directed by Milos Forman. I would just like to quickly note that I read the book; had I not read the book, I may have thought that "OFOCN" was a good movie, despite the recurrent plot choppiness, but since I read the book, I believe that it is only an okay movie. The movie does not follow the book very well. The main idea of the plot was still there, but there are things that were important in the book, but left out in the movie. The character interpretation left something to be desired. Sure there were good actors- Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito, and Christopher Lloyd- which made the movie better, but the personalities of their characters, especially those of Nicholson and Fletcher, were completely different and altered the plot a little. Another thing that was not close to being accurate was that the entire book was narrated from the main character, Chief Bromden's, point of view, complete with his hallucinations. In the movie, McMurphy is the main character, and Chief isn't even seen for most of the movie. I feel that the director could have done a better job with that; they could have used a voice over, so that chief could still narrate things from his point of view. Also, many of the important events that happened in the book, did not happen in the movie or they switched the characters that were in the events. The book was written to show how people with mental illness live and how they were treated at the time, which was shown in a deep way through the character personalities, the way they interacted, Chief's narration, and the events that happen in the book. Since the movie changed a lot of these things, I believe that the story lost its depth and its underlying meaning; it just became a movie about a sane guy disrupts a bunch of "crazy people". Lastly, the movie jumps around a lot; they leave out some details that leaves you wondering, "What caused this to be happening now?" Overall, I recommend that you either read the book or watch the movie, not both, though I would recommend the book over the movie any day. The movie itself has good actors and a fairly strong plot line, but does not follow the book it is based off of very well. All in all, I would give OFOCN a 5 out of 10.