Welcome to my first Book vs. Movie Experience blog post! When I first discovered this really underrated franchise, I just KNEW that I had to jump on it, especially since I had time to read the book before watching the movie!
Then I read the comments. No, there weren't insanely discouraging racist comments, none that I can recall anyway. It was something of what the fanbase did to the Jem and the Holograms movie... they pointed out the deviation from the original source material.
I am typically a "book-over-movie" type of young woman, and I usually get ticked / peeved when I figure out a movie is based off a book,
while I'm watching the movie. This is part of the reason I haven't seen the
Lord of the Rings trilogy yet, even though I own
The Fellowship of the Ring on VHS. I'm sorry, I always feel lost reading
The Two Towers. I will prevail!!! ... Eventually. But I digress.
Knowing full well that there was a book that I had not read yet and I had not seen the movie, I went into overdrive and got
The True Meaning of Smekday. It was surprisingly thick for a YA novel, considering the attention span of today's youths.
(Man, I love that monkey.)
It was also surprisingly impressive. It tells the tale of a young girl named Gratuity "Tip" Tucci, a 14-year-old girl who was writing a school essay on, what else, the true meaning of Smekday. Now, again, I hate giving out spoilers on these things, usually, but I will give some details about the book and the movie, plus a more comprehensive list of comparisons that may contain spoilers.
"Smekday" is named for the alien race Boov's captain, Smek, who decided to take over the earth, relocating humans to more condensed living areas around the globe, as a means of escape from the evil Gorg, which I dare not describe here. Hey, I want to leave some reason to read the book. Tip initially writes the essay (as a mandated assignment for a nationwide contest) giving a more general aspect of the actual event that happened on Christmas Day, and the whole takeover by the Boov. She is then asked to rewrite it as what is meant to her, more so than the Boov. She explains in further detail, including an expansion on how she befriended a Boov named J.Lo. Her tale ends up winning the contest, and was set to be in a 100-year time capsule.
I loved the fact that this book is not your average novel. It has, for the most part, an essay format to it, and it even has gorgeous illustrations, including some b/w graphic novel pages. There are four particular pages in this book that cracked me up -- if you read the book through, you'll see why. Another thing I personally enjoyed was the fact that Adam Rex, the author, was unafraid to step outside the color lines. Firstly, Tip is Black on her father's side (her father is unknown), and Italian on her mother's side, yet, she's not the stereotypical "biracial child." (See below.)
(Heh. "Biracial." What's the other race, Faunus?)
In fact, I was shocked when the DreamWorks version of her looked like this!
By the way, as a side note, I noticed a lot of people ship
(unsure if it's "friend-" or "relation-") Tip and Hiro (Big Hero 6).
I personally wouldn't mind seeing a crossover like this.
Shoot, Oh and Baymax... FIST BUMPING???
(Fangirl meter is off the charts.)
Anyway, here's the original design. Personally, I wish DreamWorks had kept the kinky-coily puffs.
Okay, is it me, or does she look like if Mulan were also Black?
Comment below if you see it.
Anyway, the whole point of that was Tip was multiethnic, but she looked more distinctively black than ethnically ambiguous. This, in the book, causes some social confusion which is still quite evident in real life today.
The whole point is, it's an excellent read for ages... ehh... 12 to adult. If your child's old enough to take some of the content, or if you wish to go through the book with him / her, I'd take it down to 10, 8 at max.
After reading the book, I decided to rent the movie. YES, I AM THAT FRUGAL, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Do not get me wrong, I enjoyed it. I just tried making mental notes of the differences, and it didn't work. The gap between reading the book and watching the movie was too big, so I re-read the book and watched the movie again, this time, one after the other, and holding the book in one hand and my DVD remote with the other.
For the record, and this is coming from someone who can be (and has been) a very voracious reader, this is a two-day read, at least. If you can finish it in one sitting, I wish I could give you a medal.
The movie itself..... rrrgghmmm, how do I put this?
It was a really, really cute movie. As a movie called
Home. But even as a movie it was a little sub-par.
On the technical side, this would've been some awesome animation, had it come out maybe 5 or 10 years ago.
Shark Tale is a wonky looking piece of animation (despite it's being a cute, funny movie), but seeing as how it came out in 2004, it had a little wiggle room, despite the fact that Pixar came out with
The Incredibles. 2004 had
The Polar Express, yet it also had
The Snurks.
It's okay, I had to Google that last one, too.
In any case, as bright and colorful as
Home's animation was, not to mention how well Tip's hair came out, it wasn't anywhere close to
The Penguins of Madagascar, which came out the year prior.
Now, to be able to put a book like
The True Meaning of Smekday into a feature film could take one extra-long movie (not unreasonable), or a trilogy of movies (tetralogy, if the filmmaker decides to use the lame cash grab method of dividing the last chapter into two movies), so I can understand that some things needed to be changed in order to fit the standard frame of approximately 90 minutes. Of course, some of the original source material can be pretty heavy, too. They probably would've gotten away with making a hard PG-rated film in the '80s, but my guess is that the producers were going for a much lower demographic than Adam Rex was, so needless to say, watching the "alien abduction" scene was MORE than underwhelming compared to my imagination.
Like I mentioned before, I'm not totally bashing the movie
itself, as its own entity, but.... hmm. Remember when I mentioned the fact that Tip looked Black, despite being Multi-Ethnic. Well, there does seem to be some ambiguity looking at Tip in the DreamWorks film, but she's still a (relatively) dark-skinned, green-eyed, curly-haired young teen girl. Here's probably the one thing that bugged me the most about this entire film.
There's a scene where Tip, voiced by Rihanna, and--
HOLD IT!!!!! What??! Okay, not hating on
Rihanna, but, that's just a weird choice to play
a thirteen-year-old girl, especially when she
doesn't have the vocal acrobatics to sound like
essentially a younger version of herself, at easiest.
-- her mother, Lucy, voiced by Jennifer Lopez--
Okay, again, not my first choice. Lucy Tucci is
supposed to be of Italian descent, but I guess
they didn't focus on that very much. Never mind
the fact that this J.Lo didn't seem remotely
Italian in the movie. Sorry, just the fangirl
talking in me. Whatever. Anyway. Proceed.
experience their first snow in the US.
Uhh... first... snow? They're supposed
to be from PN, aren't they?
Lucy is slipping and falling in the snow, much to Tip's amusement. Then I hear Lucy saying "We're from Barbados! We're not used to snow!"
...
The photo above doesn't even begin
to convey the feelings I got from this
fangirl-tick-off trigger.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW???!!!! Tim Johnson (director), DreamWorks, what were you thinking??! Just because you managed to get Rihanna to be a voice talent in your film, you suddenly decide you want to CHANGE TIP'S ORIGIN???!!! Are you joking? The whole point of
The True Meaning of Smekday was to tell a story from a person from whom a story is not traditionally told! I think a Black/Italian girl who looks black would totally qualify! It's not enough for a girl to just be dark-skinned(ish) with green eyes and curly hair. With that info it could be virtually anybody! I suppose you decided to take that and run in completely the opposite direction. Are you afraid of making a heroine Black? Or are you afraid of people's reactions to making a heroine Black?
Seriously, this was the biggest marketing
poster style that was used. It features Pig, the cat,
who has pretty much ZERO bearing on this
version of the story, but no Tip, who is Pig's owner.
*sigghhhh....* I apologize for the two paragraphs of ranting, and I get where they're going... sorta. They wanted an awesome soundtrack. Rihanna's a good singer. Make her a voice actress in this story and, boom, you save money in production. Same thing with Jennifer Lopez. Now, since Rihanna voices the main human, Tip, in the story, they decided to make her from Barbados, like Rihanna. Now people from Barbados can be Black or Multi-Ethnic, but it still doesn't have the same effect as an American girl who has a Black father and an Italian-American mother.
To the majority of the viewers in America, there is way less tension about a darkish-skinned (Seriously, I can tan darker than that just by being in the sun about 15 minutes.) girl from the West Indes than a, for all intents and purposes, Black/White girl who "looks more Black than White." If you don't believe me, just look at the women out there who are represented as Black women. The number of people that represent Black Women in mainstream media, who I would consider "fit the mold" -- aka Dark-Skinned women with more distinctively African features -- is a very small group that is hopefully growing. Sure you have your Twitter and Instagram stars, but Madison Ave. still turns a blind eye to these beauties.
Syntax matters, people.
Like I said, that was probably the most disturbing thing about the movie, which is more of a fangirl / representation thing. It's not a horrible change, I just personally think they tampered with the source material way too much in a stitch effort to make a cute little kids' movie.
The only other thing that I will say kinda weirded me out about the movie was the Gorn. I hate to give away the ending, but... let's just say the Gorn revelation reminded me of the climax of Chicken Little. That's all I'm gonna say about it. For those of you who've seen both movies, you know what I'm talking about.
As for the rest of this movie, I will say that Jim Parsons pretty much saved this movie. Even though I could pretty much hear Sheldon Cooper in all his lines, he nailed the Boov dialect really well! I'm actually surprised they had him use his own voice for the role, especially considering his vocal prowess in The Big Bang Theory. Steve Martin... ehh.... I'm sorry, but they could've done WAY more with his character, Captain Smek. They make him WAY more obnoxious and cowardly here than they do in the book. Yes, Smek is kind of a dictator in the book, and yes, he is running away from Gorn, but not for the sake of running away. And unlike the book, Smek is a HORRIBLE political figure! At least with The True Meaning of Smekday, he tries to make a deal with the humans to band together against the Gorn, rather than try to strike a peace deal with an intergalactic bully. Plus, he's super whiny. Steve Martin's performance in The Pink Panther 2 was a more enjoyable performance. Ah, well. At least he has classics like Father of the Bride and Trains, Planes, and Automobiles (BEST. THANKSGIVING. MOVIE. EVER!!!!!) to remember.
Those crazy factors aside, yes it was rather cute. I did enjoy seeing a very colorful J.Lo Oh, seeing the friendship between J.Lo Oh and Tip blossom, and the story from J.Lo Oh's point of view was an interesting take on the feature itself. Also, the fact that the journey is global does add a new factor to the story.
Which do I like better? The True Meaning of Smekday, obviously. It is really in-depth, and would make an excellent movie, if done correctly. Home, as a movie, like I said before, is really cute, though. I'd let my proverbial eight-year-old watch it. I would wait until he/she is twelve or thirteen before reading the book, though, just out of proverbial parental discretion. I give the book five of six Boov, and the movie 5.6 of 8 Smeks. You guys do the math at home.
Alright, the moment you've all been waiting for, here is my official comparison list of The True Meaning of Smekday and Home!
I told you it was long!!!!
Incidentally, the soundtrack to Home is on Spotify, and I took a listen to quite a few of the songs. You'd think that an album with Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez would be better than what they've cranked out... ah, well. Toward the Sun is still a half-decent song. ^_^
What books and movies have you seen together? Would you recommend any to me? Do you want to see more of these? Please let me know in the comments below!
See you!!!
