Review of The Book Thief (2013) by Mark M — 06 Jun 2016

A film adaption of Markus Zusak's 2005 novel, which is plagued from the first moment by over-earnestness, over-acting ("I'm going for the Oscar!"), odd writing choices based on the assumption the audience must be idiots who will never get the subtly of the source material, and paint-by-numbers direction.

The Book Thief (2013) should be avoided at all costs. This is what a film looks like when the heart of a book is ripped out (and its guts for good measure) and then sent to a Hollywood mortician to be 'prettied up' for burial.

.. I mean, release. I can even hear in my head the all-too-obvious conversation during a preproduction casting meeting, "God always has an English accent in films, so Death should have one, too." This book is begging for a high-quality 4-to-8 part HBO miniseries, some decent script writers, and a director with some flair and more imagination than the average goldfish.

I had to pause the film multiple times to just survive the entire run time. I seriously considering leaving it turned it off a couple of those times. I'm only giving the film one star because I liked Sophie Nélisse as Liesel and Nico Liersch as Rudy; too bad they weren't given a better adaption of the book.

Mark's Grade: 1 Star.