I guess I should do a review on what I saw the other day. We rented The Book Thief
, the movie based on the Markus Zusak book.To be honest, it wasn't all that thrilling, as a visual time waster. I mean, the people who made it, tried, but I felt they over tried in some places. The book itself was great because you could picture every word happening to that little girl. But as the movie, it was weird. Yes, they did follow the story, but they were trying to add too much life to what is supposed to be a fictionalized account of a piece of history.
For those unfamiliar, the Zusak story is a telling of a little girl named Liesel who is living in Nazi Germany in 1939. She and her brother on their way to being fostered by a set of people outside Munich, when her brother dies. After burying him on the side of the road, one of the gravediggers drops their handbook. Liesel sees this, snhatches it, and ultimately becomes what the title of this story is - The Book Thief. This starts a love affair with the attempt to learn to read. Through out the story, however, you not only see life in the eyes of a child, but it's narrated by Death, who has a strange fascination with this girl. He, in a way, doesn't let her die young, even though there is a point where her new neighborhood gets bombed during the war. She outlives everyone she knew and Death realizes humans will always be trivial to him.
The movie is worth renting, just to see what Hollywood can do to another "based on history" book (and a 2 hour and 11 minute time waster). However, I would really suggest picking the book up. It's one of the few I keep recommending to people.
Cheers
