Okay, that little “EW” made me laugh out loud. I imagined someone just yelling EW. 
Rac: Just from the title of your post, the first thing that came to mind was Holes! You’re right! It’s amazing! Perfectly cast, nearly word-for-word in the screenplay. Just like how you’d imagine it in the book, but wittier.
Also the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Great. Just like you might imagine the book, but even more fantastic. Again perfectly cast. I think it’s the cast that makes the movie.
but the worst… hmm… there are too many. XD I can only think of Harry Potter 3 right now. For a lot of plot-accuracy reasons and loopholes that I don’t feel like recollecting at the moment. I’m tired… 
Sheila
Collete Linguini - Are you serious? I thought Harry Potter 3 was by far the best harry Potter film ever made.
I think my favorite HP movie remake is probably the fourth and third one. Order of The Pheonix is good too.
I liked the Harry Potter films and the books are better !
But besides that i’m not an expert so i can’t really tell…
my other favorite book adaption is…
“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”
The film grows as Harry does, the film is light when it needs to be and heavy when it needs to be, and the director and the screenwriter go out of their way to include all the most important details. Also, the music adds to the emotions of the film, which change rapidly, but those changes never mess up the movie. Fantastic adaption!!! Definitely on my top ten films of all time!!!
noo, the harry potter films are ick! i hate all the actors, and they miss out the extra dimension of the books. hrmph 
THE GOOD
holes! you’re right, it was good. probably because the author wrote the screenplay.
lord of the rings - but then again, the book was boriinggg. great story, terrible prose! it needed to be made into a movie to work.
fight club
trainspotting
requiem for a dream
i felt all three of these pretty much understood the essense of the book!
THE BAD
harry potter, as i said
narnia - i think it was missing a certain OMPH. it was like a failed lord of the rings.
war of the worlds - why the HELL did they have to completely change everything?!
THE UGLY
willy wonka and the chocolate factory. i swear they just blatantly ignored the books and did whatever drug induced fantasy crossed their minds.
actually all the roald dahl ones are pretty dire. i think the only roald dahl that could work would be an animation done entirely in the style of quentin blake [/list]
I agree. Willy Wonka (the newer one) kinda freaked me out. I like the old Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie.
Narnia wasn’t that good. Granted, I already had a dislike for the books before seeing the first movie, but the movie itself, or the world in the movie rather, lacked a sense of history. It very much felt like everything was made for the movie (which it was.) LOTR, on the other hand, the armor and weapons and buildings all felt very lived in and ancient.
I love the Sarah,Plain and Tall movies that was based on the books. Harry Potter is ok but they skip parts, Little Women especially the film with wyomia Rider. Love the first Narnia movie but never saw the second film.
Good-i don’t know of many books into movies that are popular.
(i guess that means i’m non-cultural
Bad-
Ben Hur (absolutely took the book apart)
Coraline is a new movie based on a book and it looks really good (as discussed in a different thread).
none of the books i’ve read have ever been turned into movies. thankfully.
except one. It was the beach. and the book was fantastic. and the movie should have been called somthing else. Because what I watched wasn’t the beach.
Best: This is tough. I almost always like the books better.
Beloved (by Toni Morrison) - I saw before I read the book, so I was probably a lot more forgiving after I read the book 
. Great performances by Oprah, Danny Glover, etc.
The Great Gatsby (by F. Scott Fitzgerald) - Actually understood and liked the book better after seeing the movie. Great use of the song “What’ll I Do?”
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling) - I don’t like the plot cuts either, but I really liked the atmosphere of the film, and how they captured how terrifying the dementors were. It also helps that this was my favorite Harry Potter book.
Worst: Eragon (by Christopher Paolini) - Directed by a first time director, a special effects guy (no wonder all the emphasis was on effects, not story)Opened with a big block of exposition instead of letting us discover the history of the kingdom along with Eragon. . Made Saphira much less Eragon’s equal (as she was in the books) and more his subordinate (“Magic flows comes from dragons. It flows through the Riders who command them”). Added the completely unnecessary bit about the dragon dying if the rider dies (I don’t remember that being in the books). Cut short the development of the Eragon-Saphira relationship by having her instantly grow up during her first flight - Eragon didn’t even get to name her! Eragon looks less like a poor farmboy than a cross between a boy band member and Prince Valliant. I liked Saphira’s voice (Rachel Weisz) and she looked fantastic (if not quite blue enough) but I think they blew the budget all on her because they made elf Arya into a very round-eared person, the troll-like urgals into tall, ugly people and got rid of the dwarves completely! Inane lines of dialogue like, “Time moves swiftly Eragon. Yesterday you were a farmboy, today you are a hero. Tomorrow may see us together again.”
That said, I had heard Eragon was bad and expected it.
My biggest disappointment was the movie of my favorite book, Watership Down. It’s not actually a bad movie, but they cut out a LOT from the book.
Second is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, for focusing on the action sequences (Flying cars! Giant spiders!) at the expense of the character-driven material (Hermione’s crush on Prof. Lockhart cut down to a single blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot).
Yeah, I fell asleep in Eragon. I’m not even kidding!
I’ve never seen or read it but but I’ve heard Eragon is almost a straight rip-off of Star Wars.
Oh, on topic. I don’t like any of the Potter films after Chamber of Secrets.
Wizards scare me really easily.
I just saw Nim’s Island, and it was spectacular! 
I read the book some years ago, and was speechless when I saw the trailer for the movie (a long time ago). It turned out pretty good. Some parts stayed true to the book, some other parts were added for a creative touch.
Just saw a little film called Allah Made Me Funny.
It was a stand-up comedy movie starring three Muslim-American comedians. It was hilaroius and quite insightful, and it had a nice message to it. If I had to say anything bad about it, I thought the pacing was off at times, but that’s hard to avoid in a movie like this. Overall: A-. Definitely go see it in a theater if you have the chance, but do rent it when it comes out on DVD. It’s jam-packed with laughs and heart!
Personally, the best adaptation I’ve seen is Golden Compass, even though they messed up horribly with the decision of that title.
Eragon was a good adaptation too, but just like the book - boring in the beginning and exciting in the end.
Horrible adaptations are definitely most of the Harry Potter films. If you read the books, you can’t possibly enjoy the films without getting angry. They take out so much now that I only watch it to better visualize the characters and scenes, seeing as how my first imagination interpretation has long since been destroyed.
Another is the Spiderwick Chronicles. I read the books right before the film had come out, and when I saw the film it was a huge disappointment. They could’ve left everything as is, but no, they had to put their own little silly twist on it. Although I can say that the ending was much happier than the one in the book, and I enjoyed it.