Brittney DeLaGarza

This movie completely ruined the book! I know not everything can be portrayed in the movie as in a book and stuff will be cut/changed. But this movie took that to extreme. The mother's character, Rose Mary was so far off it wasn't even slightly related to the reality of the mother Jeanette writes about in the book. Rose Mary was just as neglectful if not more than the father, Rex Walls. Rex in the movie is made out to be this fun, caring dad who just can't get over his addiction to alcohol. This was not the picture Jeanette Walls depicts of her parents in the story. The movie barely even touched on the fact that the Walls children were severely neglected to the point of digging through school trash cans for food, being so filthy other's sprayed lysol when they walked by, and almost freezing to death in winters because their parents wouldn't be bothered to provide heat. It saddens me Jeanette Walls allowed this movie to be made as a "romanticized" version of her and her siblings' life. She worked so hard and was so vulnerable in her book and it seems she threw that away for movie "fame". Maybe she exaggerated in the book?