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Desperation Week; Day 4 (part 2)

Posted: May 25, 2006, 22:09
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Here is what all of you thought about Desperation:

Overall, it was a pretty good adaptation, and probably the best we're going to get. That being said, sometimes I think it went over the top and it nowhere matched the raw intensity of the book.

DESPERATIONS, chilling, grab you by the seat, and wonderfully created.

It was a letdown when Tak had to leave Perlman (was perfect, by the way!), but at least we still had Skerritt to hold the weight up. The "Ghost Pie" thing was pretty dumb, but thank God (har-de-Har) they didn't skimp on the touchy religious aspects and they sure as HELL didn't skimp on the violence, so I'll give this a thumbs up. The kid (Shane Haboucha) did a pretty good job, and c'mon, how can you not like the Frewer?

This was one of the better ones folks! Pretty close to the book as I remember, and scary fun.

Loved it! Great gross-outs, good moral story!

I thought it was very good- true to the novel. Fantastic!

Mick Garris needs to stop making Stephen King movies!!! They all look and sounds the same, we need some new blood to interpret the master King's work.

Ah, it was alright. A bit too preachy with all the God stuff, but that was how the book was too. I thought it was enjoyable in a B-movie kind of sense. Not great, but not completely terrible either.

I was a little worried before, but Desperation the movie is the absolute best film adaption of the book to Date. Action packed, raw, gritty and scary. Mick Garris really fucks the devil in this one.

I watched the show last night and overall I gave it an A-. It's very difficult to condense a book the size of Desperation into a three-hour movie.

FANTASTIC! Ron Perlman was PERFECT! Best King Movie EVER MADE!!!

I thought the movie was good,, IMO it was petty faithful to the book and as in the book I thought the best part was the beginning and then weakened at the end.

While we don't watch a lot of King movies, we enjoyed it. Not too scary and a good story line. Well done!

Overall, I enjoyed seeing how the book was adapted, but did not experience any of the fear or uneasiness brought on by reading the book. As with almost all of Stephen King's adaptions for television, the lighting in the scenes are way to bright which minimizes the fear and dread that something is lurking around the corner.

I thought it was really good, exactly how I pictured things when I was reading them. Loved some of the camera angles that Garris chose, they added to the tension. Very true to the book.

Loved the movie! Collie Entragian character was exactly as I had pictured he would be.

Overall for a TV movie I thought it was very well done. The constant commercial breaks really broke up the flow of the movie. This should have been done as an HBO movie, not a broadcast network movie.

It was great. Definitely worth the year we all waited to see it!

I thought the movie was very well done, very true to the book itself which is rare. The special effects were awesome and it had just the right amount of humor and gore to keep even the jaded horror fan tuned in.

I thought Desperation was an excellent and very true adaption. Yes, there were some things left out, but understanding the limitations of the medium, I would rather have things left out than added or (worse) changed.

The problem with "Desperation" isn't with the actors. They're simply as stranded in the material as their characters are in the town itself. The true problem with "Desperation" lies in King's general inability to adapt his own material - a complete lack of understanding as to what works best on the page and what works best on the screen. Couple that with Garris - a director who historically excels at mediocrity - and you have a product that is faithful to the content, but not the spirit, of the novel. Second-rate dialogue, an unimpressive visual style and an overall hard-to-translate story make "Desperation" a fairly desperate attempt at primetime television.

Possibly Mick Garris' best film adaption of Stephen King's work yet! Loved the lighting, cast, effects and a brilliant performance by Ron Pherlman, he stole the show for the first half.

Loved Desperation. A mixture of Tommyknockers, The Stand and Children of the Corn.

Desperation was great, loved it!

I thought it was very good but think the level of suspense was much higher in the book.

SK's comment that Desperation is "probably the best TV movie to be made from my work" didn't set the bar very high, considering how good It and The Tommyknockers (the novels) were, and how awful their TV adaptations were. But he's absolutely right. Given the restrictions of time and budget, Desperation was quite a bit better than I'd dared to hope.

Watched it-LOVED it!!

The choice of location was a little off. The landscape was far too green to look like the Great Basin of Nevada. But that's minor.
The animal handling/training (particularly the mountain lion) was terrific. The actual story never made me feel any emotions, much less mae me think I was discovering some new insight into the story's theme of faith. I felt a little queasy at the special effects, but that's about it. Maybe removing the interior monologue of the characters, all that remained was this puzzle of forced motivation, lame gross-out scenes and corny dialogue. Eh.

Saw Desperation last night and I loved it! Ron Perlman did an excellent job as usual! Not as gorey as I thought it would be, great movie.

I'm glad I didn't watch American Idol (which I never do anyway) because that was a very good adaptation of the book.
My wife was scared again but she kept watching, which is a very good sign. We loved it!

I enjoyed the movie. The only thing I didn't like was the boy who played David Carver...he was a hooooorible actor. I never once felt his pain on the deaths of his loved ones. Looked so fake.

I didn't like it. It was a cheap, shoddy, half-hearted effort.

The best TV adaptation yet.

Good overall but poor acting on the part of many characters greatly reduced the enjoyment…best character portrayals were that of David, Mary and Collie…Ron Perlman was right out of the book!!!...fabulous…I expected better from Tom Skerrit…

Entertaining movie, for sure, especially the sets. I expected more from David's character than Shane delivered but the movie on the whole was very good.

I haven't read Desperation since it first came out in Canada, so, I wasn't sure what to expect of the TV Movie that aired this week but, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought the acting was good, steady, throughout and the "story" was well paced. It was a fun ride.


Thanks to all of you that sent in your comments.