[movies] The Glass Castle... anyone?

[randomuser]

Well, I absolutely loved “Captain Fantastic” from a year or two ago, and “The Glass Castle” (based upon a true story) was a little similar - not too similar, but similar enough to want to check it out - and, wow…

Not spoiling anything to say that all the kids still honored their father after what he did to them. That’s one of the reasons the media is giving the movie terrible reviews – but, wow, was someone cutting onions in the theater?

Has anyone seen this movie?

 

[Irishmom2]

Not yet, but I did read the book and that’s why I am hesitating on seeing the movie. The book is true. The movie is Hollywood. Don’t know what they did to it or how they may have changed the truth.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Not yet, but I did read the book and that’s why I am hesitating on seeing the movie. The book is true. The movie is Hollywood. Don’t know what they did to it or how they may have changed the truth.

Read the books years ago. If Hollywood is true to form,the movie won’t really reflect the actual book very closely,is my guess.

 

[EnglishTeacher]

LOVED the book–what an amazing story, and so well told. For that reason, I was excited to see the movie.

The movie turned out to be underwhelming compared to the book and fails to do justice to its subject material. I understand that the screenwriters have to pare down the story in order to turn it into a movie, but they really left out most of the story, even some of the best parts. They hit a few highlights, but they movie is mostly about her young adult relationship with her parents (when she and they were living in NYC), with some long flashbacks to her childhood. They also sentimentalized and sanitized her childhood story more than I thought they would have or should have. And they cleaned up the portrayal of Ms. Walls’s mother, making it seem as though she was a relatively normal, hippie-ish lady sucked into a bad marriage, instead of the showing us the eccentric, exasperatingly selfish, mentally ill-but-occasionally insightful woman portrayed in the book. In the book, both the mother and the father are clearly to blame for the family dysfunction, but the movie places the blame more heavily on the father.

If you haven’t read the book, you will probably enjoy the movie. It’s a decent film, but it could have been so much better. The film characters lacked the complexity seen in the book, and the movie made insufficient attempt to show the full extent of the poverty and hunger described by the author in the book. Suppose it is still worth seeing, but disappointing all the same.

 

[Irishmom2]

Thank you, EnglishTeacher for your insightful review. It sounds like my fears have come true. What you described is exactly what I thought they would end up doing.

I urge people to please read the book. It is an unbelievable, but true story of resilience.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Thank you, EnglishTeacher for your insightful review. It sounds like my fears have come true. What you described is exactly what I thought they would end up doing.

I urge people to please read the book. It is an unbelievable, but true story of resilience