Flora & Ulysses - I'm so disappointed

[klmama]

I watched Disney's Flora & Ulysses tonight on Disney Plus.  The story started out resembling the book by Kate DiCamillo, and I was enjoying it.  Then, for some reason, it diverged and lost the whole point.  I'm sad.  Disney had a great opportunity here, but instead they created new events for laughs and suspense, and they totally missed the point of the original story.  😢 

 

[Terabith]

Well, that sucks.  I loved the book.  I'm sorry to hear it's not faithful to it.  

[Farrar]

Ugh. The trailer made it look like maybe they had threaded the needle and gotten the sense of the book while adding a bit of Disneyish zany whatever.

But I'm not surprised. I mean, Kate DiCamillio's work is so tinged with a weird, bittersweet quality that is very hard to convey on screen.

[klmama]

There's just enough of it still there to keep you watching and hoping, but it's not the same beautiful story.  Now, my dh, who never read the book, laughed and enjoyed the silliness of it all, but dc and I were very disappointed.

[pitterpatter]

I'm beginning to think that Disney ruins all good books. Stargirl was a horrible rendition, IMO. Not Disney, but I hated how The Giver was presented too.

[klmama]

10 hours ago, Farrar said:

But I'm not surprised. I mean, Kate DiCamillio's work is so tinged with a weird, bittersweet quality that is very hard to convey on screen.

Yes. That's the biggest problem.  This movie is too happy.  It minimizes the mother/child conflict and pawns off most of the danger to Ulysses to a new character.  There's no huge impact at the realization that Mom loves Flora,  because it was never really in doubt.

 

[Farrar]

20 minutes ago, klmama said:

Yes. That's the biggest problem.  This movie is too happy.  It minimizes the mother/child conflict and pawns off most of the danger to Ulysses to a new character.  There's no huge impact at the realization that Mom loves Flora,  because it was never really in doubt.

 

Oh, I haven't seen it yet, but that seems like a good analysis. I think that's hard for Disney and other children's media on the screen to do - put actual children, animals, and relationships at risk in a real way. The risk has to be zany, fun, silly, etc. The relationship things that people learn have to be safe lessons not deep emotional lessons because that would imply that maybe - like you said - there were serious emotional problems to be solved where a parent didn't love a child or something else supposedly too shocking to allow children's psyches to consider.

I wonder if movies have gotten worse at this in recent years.

 

[Murphy101]

I have not read the book and I thought it sucked. My family seems to have enjoyed it for he laughs though. Like most Disney, I just thought it was stupid.   Sure the parents commit felonies and misdemeanors and act irresponsible but everyone is happy. Until they lose their house bc that mortgage doesn’t get paid and the police arrest them. And never mind the problem of adults making some kid be the center of their world and the source of all their happiness.  But no pressure. Yeah. Sure.  
 

oh well. I got some knitting done.

and then we watched Wandavision and that was much better.