The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle
The Last Unicorn with Alan Arkin and Jeff Bridges
A unicorn comes to believe that she is the last unicorn in
the world and sets out to see if she can find any others.
In broad strokes the story in the movie and the book are the
same.
The unicorn sets out on a journey to find other
unicorns. She meets up with Schmendrick
the magician and Molly Grue and heads toward King Haggard’s castle to solve the
mystery of the missing unicorns. But the
book is deeper somehow. It is also
infinitely sadder. Schmendrick is a bit
of a clown in the movie, when his tricks go wrong it’s funny but in the book he
is not a character that can be laughed at, he is to be pitied. There is a dark gloomy feeling to the entire
book that doesn’t completely come across in the movie and I think it loses
something. As with most book to movie
conversions parts were cut for the movie.
There is a whole cursed town in the book that doesn’t show up in the
movie. There are a few other things that
don’t show up too but mostly things that the story could work around, it still
works without them. The cut that really
makes a difference is the time table.
Things happen more quickly in the movie.
The slow loss of hope, the creeping despair is lost in the movie and it
fails to have the same impact. The movie
was okay but the book was great.
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