The most butchered and unfaithful adaptation ever made

Rating: 4/10 (28 June 2006)

Milos Forman based his "masterpiece" on a true masterpiece, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, which is one of the best books I have ever read. I therefore cannot judge this film in any other way than to see how well it translated from book to screen. Judging in this way however, the result is unbelievably poor.
Now, I appreciate the difficulty in adapting a book to a movie if the book is very abstract, rich in ideas, symbolism or imagerybut One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest is straightforward and linear and everything is very well-defined and spelled-out. It's not rocket science. The adaptation was atrocious and disappointed me immensely.
I imagine Milos Forman either read this book in the dark, or read a brief summary of basic events on spark-notes, and completely ignored all themes, narrative, characterizations and symbols because he was in a hurry. He then put all basic events together in a hat, and took one at random and put it anywhere in the movie. Et voilà, he had his Cuckoo's film.
There is simply too much wrong with this film that I can impossibly list all mistakes. But here are a few significant ones:
1. The fishing trip was huge at the end of the book. It signified the culmination of the development of the characters. Forman put it in the first 20 minutes of the movie and completely wasted it by misplacing it.
2. Louise Fletcher was not bad, but what part of "full-chested" don't they get? I'm not advocating some blown-up porn star chest here, but why cast a small-breasted actress? Couldn't they just have stuffed her bra? How difficult could it be? It may seem shallow of me to bring up such a seemingly trivial thing, but Nurse Ratched's repressed sexuality vs. McMurphy's raw sexuality was possibly the biggest theme in the book.
3. What part of a loud, boisterous entry by a big, tall redheaded man with tattoos don't they get? Why make it into a small, silent entry by a slim, 5'9" dark-haired guy with no tattoos (Jack Nicholson)? McMurhpy's important introduction was ruined.
4. McMurphy's first meeting with the patients showed how truly different from them he was, going around and joking and laughing and shaking everyone's hand, like a politician or a salesman. In the movie, he says hello to one person, then shyly looks around the ward. Huh??
5. The ward was supposed to be gloomy, quiet and humorless and then gradually change with McMurphy's presence. Well, its initial state was not emphasized at all and people were laughing even before he had joined them. Lame.
7. The doctor was made into a shrewd and almost manipulative man in the moviehe was extremely timid in the book, and McMurhpy used him in the jockeying for power.
8. Chief Bromden was the narrator in the book. He wasn't in the film and he should have beenif not to stay faithful to the original work, then to explain things that Forman simply didn't bother with.
Like I said, everything was very spelled out in the book. So the above weren't my 'preconceived' ideas about what I wanted it to be, but actual truths! How someone chose to ignore or butcher them is beyond me. This was a strictly review of an adaptation, and not a movie. I'm sure that if you've never read the book you'll find it very entertaining.