Hearts in Atlantis | | Cast : | Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin | | Director : | Scott Hicks | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | September 28, 2001 | | DVD Released Date : | February 03, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 06, 2005 | | Summary | Wastin yo time | Content
 | Hello all. I must say, this movie does NO justice to the book. I can't stand the fact that it "rushes' through every important character and leaves you with Anthony Hopkins describing some BS to a kid. Of course, when AT character says it's the CIA looking for him, the story doesn't break a beat. However, in the book, this story is a part of a whole series (see other's). I don't want to kill everything for a "layman", but this holds no grounds in my case. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 16, 2005 | | Summary | Read the book instead | Content
| I just finished reading the book for the second time last week, and I just got done watching the dvd tonight. I've read everything by Stephen King and I think this book may be the best. The movie is not bad; Anthony Hopkins is well cast and does fine here, but the movie is like a reader's digest condensed version of a masterpiece that should not be touched. I know - you say that the book is always better than the movie. But this time the heart of the novel was removed. The characters were so much more developed, the story more supernatural. The book is a masterpiece that captures the spirit of the 60's, the magic of childhood, and the inevitable loss of everything. Skip the movie and spend an enjoyable week reading. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 12, 2005 | | Summary | If I could go lower I would! | Content
| As a movie, I guess this was all right... but my rating is really based on the fact that I read an amazing book a few years ago and went to see what I was hoping would be an amazing movie, only to find that it wasn't. Anthony Hopkins was (as usual) hauntingly distant and the child actors were very good and all... I just feel like they took the name of a really good book and made a completely different movie under the pretense that it was an adaptation.
There were three very good, very poignant parts to the book, unfortunately this movie only covers one and a half... I say half because for some very odd reason, they decided to completely change the ending. If you're looking for an all right movie, then I guess you could always catch it on HBO when they're playing it on a Saturday at 3am... but if you're looking for a movie loosely based on a really great book, this is not it! |
| Rating | | | Date | May 12, 2005 | | Summary | Better than the book version in many ways... | Content
| Movies based on books don't turn out well very often. Moving a story from one meduim to another often results in a loss of many things that made it attractive in the first place. In this case - the story also contained a lot of Stephen King's "back story" from his Gunslinger series, which would've been nearly impossible to translate to a non - King - who'd like to see the film (if at all).
The latter was overcome by exchanging the villains from he yellow coated men to FBI agents without losing anything in the story. And as for the former - while losing some of the book's POV of 11 year old Bobby for an adult POV, it hadn't hurt any of the characters, and even made some better (Bobby's mom semed a much fuller character, for instance).
The only thing lost in the movie was the book's original purpose, since it only brings the first out of five stories. While being the longest one in the book, it is only serves as background to the other 4 short stories in the book which attempt to inspect the Vietnam genertion (something which is totally missing from the movie). |
| Rating | | | Date | January 29, 2005 | | Summary | A Pretty Good King Adaptation | Content
| I had seen this movie a few years ago, the day it came out on DVD and then lost it. I remembered the movie, but nothing about it. Then I read Stephen Kings book and I wanted to see the movie again. Well, after another viewing, the film version has its highs and its lows. The first being the fact that the book was 5 novellas and the movie is based on the first one "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and the last one
"Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling" and they only took a single idea from the last one, that being the reason Bobby comes back to Conneticut. A high in my oppinion is that they didn't attempt to adapt the second, third, and fourth novellas (Hearts in Atlantis, Blind Willie, and Why We're In Vietnam). Another high would be Anthony Hopkins performance as Ted Brautigan. A low would be that the movie lacks the novellas emotion. This film isn't that sad, and the book is. The novella was in my oppinion some of Kings best writing, as well as some of his most emotional. The movie really isn't that emotional and also in the novella, Bobbys mother is portrayed as an evil woman. In the movie, even though she does commit an evil act, she suddenly reconciles with Bobby, while in the book Bobby hates her the rest of his life. Anyway, the movie is about Bobby Garfield (the sometimes talented, sometimes annoying Anton Yelchin). He lives in Harwich, Conneticut in an apartment building with his mother Liz (Hope Davis, "About Schmidt"). One day
a new tenant moves in, and the tenants name is Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins). Bobby and Ted hit it off right away, but Liz doesn't trust him. Ted offers Bobby a job, read the paper to him every day and look for the low men. A group of supernatural beings hunting Ted. In case you're interested in finding out what the low men are read the 6th book in the Dark Tower series: Song of Susannah by Stephen King. Overall, this isn't that bad of a film and it's a semi-well adaptation of a King novel. It's not half as bad as a lot of the adaptations. I think that it was good, except for some bits of dialouge that were kind of stupid and predictable. I recommend in addition to this, however: Secret Window. B. |
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