| Posted: 09 March 2012 at 5:26am | IP Logged | 2
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Having finished RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS, I checked Amazon to see if the movie version was available. It was, and cheap, so I ordered it.Wish I hadn't. The movie is a "classic" example of Hollywood excesses, the very first scene being a complete rewrite of the book, and each succeeding scene getting further and further away. One of those movies where I genuinely found myself wondering why anybody had paid for the rights to the book, if this was the film they wanted to make. This wasn't even like PEYTON PLACE, which I read several years ago, after having seen the movie in my teens. There, I came away wondering how the heck anybody in the late 1950s, with the Hays Office (the censors) in full vigor, ever thought they could film the book. But in the case of RALLY, none of the changes made seem to have been done to placate the censors. Instead, the overwhelming impression is of what happens when a book written by a New Yorker is "translated" to the screen by someone from Los Angeles. Let's face it, despite their "cosmopolitan" affectations, those cities do NOT have the same zeitgeist. Adamantly so, in fact. The book was a best seller. I wonder what people thought, who'd read and enjoyed it, who paid to see the movie and found something so completely different? (Not much, I expect. It's basically a pretty BAD movie, even if all it's "adaptation" sins are forgiven.)
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