Gia Yoo

As many would, I read this book in school. Specifically, in middle school, in the seventh grade in English class. The book was pretty good. It didn't answer all of my questions, but I thought it was a good book nonetheless. After finishing the book, my English teacher showed the movie adaptation to the class. Compared to the excellently written book, this movie was a mixed opinion for me. The good things: It stayed true to the book for the most part. Most of the scenes from the movie were pretty darn accurate to the book. Some scenes were left out or cut short, and other scenes were different than depicted in the novel. The bad things: The acting was pretty mediocre. Compared to the book, where I could feel the tension and all of the emotion of the characters interacting in different scenes, in the movie, I couldn't really feel the same way I did for the book. For example, some of the scenes in the movie which were supposed to have some realistic tension just felt sort of bland and half-acted in the movie. I didn't really find much emotion coming off of the characters. The characters were not very accurate (as far as I can imagine). In the books, we were given clear descriptions to the characters. Some of them came out pretty good in the movie, like Darry, who looked pretty accurate to the source material. But others like Dally didn't. In the books, they said he had white hair. But in the movie, he had a dark hair color, which is a huge contrast. Another character is Johnny, who was said to have multiple scars in his face from being beaten up. In the movie, we only see a scratch or two in his face, but nothing that was described in the novel adaptation.