[lahdh4]

To anyone who read the book, Lifetime is premiering the movie on Saturday, April 12th at 9pm.

[Mommy24]

Leigh, I have not read the book, I am looking forward to the movie though.

Did you read it?

[lahdh4]

The book was just OMG!! it made the rounds of my friends. Let me know if you want to borrow it and I will loan it to you.

[BrandyHagz]

I was SO hopeful. I usually avoid Lifetime TV like the plague. They rarely have ‘quality’ shows and they are usually poorly done with regards to ‘facts’ …there is more money to be made in portraying the stereotypes. Sad really…

Anyway – that’s neither here nor there.

The Memory Keepers Daughter – fantastic book. Loved it. Read it and passed it around to everyone I know. It was just awesome.

So my expectations of this Made For Lifetime Movie were fairly low – given my personal opinion of their ‘practices’ etc. I didn’t figure they’d be able to pull it off – and low and behold – they didn’t.

Talk about being jerked around. There were HUGE pieces of the book missing. HUGE. Entire decades!

For example, you’re watching when Phoebe is 6 and the mom is in the school board meeting (which, ironically, is only part of a VERY large puzzle) and she gets home and goes upstairs and asks Phoebe who helped her get her PJ’s on and she says “Dad” – now at this point, unless you’ve really read the book – you don’t know that they’re not yet married (one would assume, because she’s relocated to Philly and because that’s where Al was from and they are living together, that they have, in fact, married). They just breeze by the part where he asked her (for like the 100th time, they don’t even get into that!) to marry him…and at this point, Phoebe is like 16! It was so fragmented…if I hadn’t been able to pull in the pieces which I had read in the book to make sense of it – I might have thought the whole stupid movie was just poorly pulled together (like maybe an editor went crazy with the knife).

They don’t talk about when Dad goes back to his childhood home. They don’t talk about the time he’d lived outside of the home. They’re married, then *poof* they’re not married and she’s talking about Jacques. Where did the rest of it go!?

I know, I know – they had to fit it into 2 hours…but why tell the story at all if, sadly, you would have had to read the book to even understand what was going on. Huge entire chucks – huge pieces of the story that bridge the story together and made it make sense were just not there. This book could have benefited from a 3 part mini-series. The story was that fascinating and great – it would have been so great to have the entire story (front to back) told.

My opinion – flop. Sadly. I really wanted to watch and love this movie as much as I loved the book. I even stayed up past my bedtime (which, at my age, has started to be right after my 4:30 dinner…LOL) and then, I got so worked up with how crappy it was, I couldn’t get to sleep after! Ugh!

What did you think?

[lahdh4]

I think it would have been better as a 2 parter. That way they could have put in those missing pieces.
I as well wasn't expecting much from it since it is a book made into a movie an I new that there would be much missing.

[Nicole28]

No one get mad at me!!

I was disappointed in the book. Maybe because of all the hype? I just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

And the Lifetime movie? I was also disappointed. I love Dermot Mulroney but his acting was less than stellar. I also did not appreciate the huge ellipses of time in the movie version.

My best girlfriend is finishing the book up during her cruise this week so I am excited to see what she thinks.

Strangely enough, the movie provoked a lot of adoption-related sadness for me, but the book really did not.

[thanksgivingmom]

I didn't even try to watch the movie because I read reviews that said it didn't do the book justice. I didn't want to have a Brandy-type reaction so I just opted out of that one.

Although I am bummed to hear that it was as bad (worse?) than I expected it to be....I thought maybe if I heard awesome things here I would watch it...

[kelceesmom]

I didn't read the book but the movie to me was disappointing. I was always going well happened to get to this point? Am I missing something.

[lahdh4]

Denice, see that is way I think it would have been better as a 2parter. Those spots would have been filled in.

I read the book after all the hype. I just got the book last year and I think it was all ready out a year by that time.