Painful to watch. Skip it and READ THE BOOK.

Rating: 3/10 (13 July 2005)

I just read Alex Garland's highly readable and entertaining novel, and immediately went out and rented the film version. I don't know what I was expecting, but this was quite possibly the worst film adaptation I've ever seen. I became concerned after 15 minutes, pretty much gave up hope at 40 minutes, and stopped watching 2/3 of the way through in sheer disgust. They missed so many opportunities to make this a good film that I found myself clenching my teeth and my fists every time they f*cked it up. Which they did with astonishing frequency. The best parts of the novel, the most beautifully imagined, surreal, powerful, essential scenes are *nonexistent* in the film version, and the rest is needlessly changed around and incompetently adapted. Things that would have made sense in the book make no sense in the movie, because the scriptwriter apparently thought "This would be cool!" and changed around things that are essential for understanding later developments. Other times, they try to show extreme emotions and character flaws way too early in the film without any background to explain why these feelings or conditions exist in the characters. Instead of showing how the characters change over the course of their experiences, the filmmakers apparently thought they could save some time and effort by making them that way in the first place! There is none of the wonderfully subtle character development and gradual revelations that exist in the book. The result is a confused and totally mismanaged mess. I don't agree with the general maxim that voice-over always covers for bad writing, but that is completely obviously true in this particular film.
I really hope this gets remade in the future, by people who have some clue about what they're doing. The two partially redeeming qualities of the film are some moments of genuine humor and a few beautifully shot scenes. The rest is garbage. Completely inappropriate soundtrack, mangled script, an astonishingly bad performance by Leonardo DiCaprio... Save yourself 2 hours of torture and read the book instead.