I suppose we could have seen this post coming.

With my review of The Grownup, and Gone Girl (book) it was perhaps only a matter of time before I followed up with a review of this movie.

But the question I want you to ask yourself while reading, is did knowing I would eventually do a post about this movie ruin the thrill of seeing it finally appear on the blog?

I felt myself trying to answer a similar question while watching David Fincher’s 2014 adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Despite writing an entire post about all the other reasons the novel was excellent besides the big twist, still the main question on my mind while watching was: Had I spoiled this for myself?

So far as I can tell, Fincher stayed pretty darn close to the source material. I didn’t have a copy of the book on hand to check, but I think the opening line of narration is exactly the same as the opening of the book.

The opening montage expertly shows the depressed Missouri town Nick and Amy move back to, and their house — and later the crime scene — felt plucked exactly from my own imagination.

By this point in the film (so almost right away), my experience while watching seemed to switch from wanting to know WHAT was going to happen next to wanting to know HOW was it going to happen next. And which did I like better?

I thought Amy and Nick meeting had potentially even more cute/clever dialogue than the book; however, I felt Nick’s portrayal was too sympathetic throughout (although I still think Ben Affleck did a great job. It’s the least “cool” I’ve ever seen him and I though it worked perfectly).

On the topic of casting, these days I’m pretty happy to see Rosamund Pike in just about anything. Even though she’s had a pretty long and illustrious career before playing Moiraine Damodred in Amazon Prime’s Wheel of Time adaptation, I’d say it was that role which really put her on my radar (I didn’t even remember that she was in Die Another Day until looking at IMDB). Of course this role is much different, but still — to my mind — incredibly well executed and compelling.

For folks around my age, Neil Patrick Harris will always be Barney Stinson. Obviously he’s had other incredible roles besides How I Met Your Mother — my personal favs include A Series of Unfortunate Events, Undercover Brother, and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog — but for any millennials watching, Harris’s portrayal of Desi Collings is a bit uncanny but for all the wrong reasons.

In 2014, How I Met Your Mother was just winding to a close, so I’m sure Harris’s association with the show was even stronger then it would be today. And for Gone Girl, I’m sure Harris was excited to take on a more serious role, maybe even considering it an opportunity to show how problematic a character like Barney Stinson would be outside the context of a comedy. And so Harris relies on the same moves: the overt once-overs and unearned confidence.

I can guess at what the effect was supposed to be here. I can logic it through. There was supposed to be a reversal, a calling to account. A not-so-funny-now moment.

Unfortunately, I think the effect was quite the opposite. The association with the humor was too strong. Instead of adding a sharp edge to once laughable behavior, I felt Harris’s casting took the sharp edge off some really sinister behavior.

My only other critique of the movie also involves Desi’s storyline. In the novel, Desi’s relationship with his mother (he’s lowkey obsessed with her and only dates women that look like her) is just like this weird, inexplicable nuance that really just turns you off to the character straight away. While reading it I remember wondering how Flynn had even come up with it, and what was she trying to accomplish by including it.

I never really came to a firm conclusion about it, whether I liked it or not, but I really felt its absence from the film (or if it was included, I straight up missed it). Now, there is probably not much revelatory in stating that film often lacks the nuance and intricacy of a book. They are different art forms, with different constraints, and different strengths. But in this instance — after Fincher has been proving all film just how closely he can get to the source material — I found myself wishing they had left that weird detail in.

So, Give ‘Gone Girl‘ a Watch?

Absolutely! But to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this post, my experience was absolutely effected by reading the book first, and I feel this is a rare instance in which I kinda wished I had seen the movie first, and then gone back to the source material later.

I generally try not to think of the relationship between a film and book in terms of one being better or worse than the other, but since these are so similar, I can’t seem to help it. I did enjoy the book more, and I think if I had seen the movie first, I would have been absolutely floored, and then in awe to see it all unravel on the page, instead of floored to see it on the page, and slightly disappointed by what I saw on the screen.

That’s all I have for this week!

Has anyone seen this movie before? Or read the book? Which did you like better? Was there anything you saw included in one that didn’t make it into the other? Did you wish it had?

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Looking forward to talking about this one!

Until next time . . .