The Beach
 

I found the book to be a million times better than the movie. The movie had so much potential but failed terribly. One of the things i hated the most was the love scene between Leo and the French girl. It should never of happened. The shark attacks were a highlight however.
Apparently while filming it, they wrecked the entire beach and reef and never compensated the Thai's for it. Too far.

Finally, someone else who has read this book. Alex Garland is amazing, no? He was only 26 when he wrote The Beach.

His next novel, The Tesseract, is even more mature in theme and scope, if not quite as immediately entertaining.

For people who enjoy writing as well as reading, I think Garland is essential.

(He also wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later)

firstly, i have to agree that the book is far better than the movie.

but, having said that, i still feel that the film captured the intended adventurous spirit. and the first half of the film is still great.

this is true.
and its appalling, that they could create a film that highlighted the secret, mysterious beauty of the place, and then screw it up, and not care.

hell, standing on its own, the movie was horrible. still need to read the book. if nothing else, the book captured untouched beauty.. after seeing the movie, i had a great desire to visit the area for myself.. only recently came upon the actual locale of the beach, being Koh Phangan.. desperately need to make a trip to Thailand at some point soon :)

i read the book in 3 days i think.
excellent book.
movie was less interesting. in the opening scenes you just feel it's not really bangkok, and the movie never recovers.

great soundtrack tough. i would have liked the movie more if i had never read the book.

Hate to say it, but really liked the movie. But I think that Im the only person who liked the movie. I have heard nothing but bad feedback about it....... oh well, Im just a little odd....

I quite liked the movie, so i guess i should read the book.

The movie was entertaining. Parts of it were a little too drawn out, but overall it was good.
And of course the book was better! Has anyone ever read a book that had the movie end up being better? I can't think of one.
Excluding Movies that were turned into books of course.

The movie just had too many problems, but there were good parts (like the shark attack and did anyone else think that the video game part was pretty funny?).

I didn't think the book was amazing or anything. The utopia turned to nightmare theme has been done much better and Garland didn't add much too it.

However I enjoyed the gen X/"video game" generation sensibilities he writes with. It's something I can relate to and, in my opinion, there aren't many writes who write with those sensibilites as well as he does. I think that's probably why I liked 28 Days Later despite the cliches thrown in from the zombie movie genre.