Geek of Oz

Author David Mitchell once charitably said of the film adaptation of his novel Cloud Atlas, “any adaptation is a translation … and I believe a degree of reinterpretation for the new language may be not only inevitable but desirable…”. So indeed were my sentiments about Peter Jackson’s stripping back of (and in many places adding to) The Lord of the Rings books to create his masterful trilogy concluded some eleven years back. The abandonment of plot-irrelevant or dramatically redundant scenes (novel fans will understand this to mean most notably Tom Bombadil or the Scouring of the Shire) and the embellishment of the novel’s only lightly-treated romantic plotlines served to create a film that was tauter and more emotionally engaging. Suffice it to say, I believe straying from the source material isn’t always heretical butchery; often its just good, audience-minded discretion.

In a move set to shock no one, in his latest film Delivery Man , Vince Vaughn plays a schlubby, middle-aged slacker who is forced to face up to his responsibilities … blah blah … conflict … blah blah … resolution. Forgive my abrupt dismissal of it, but when a film is so overly formulaic as this manages to be, it’s nigh on impossible for it to work for me.