Heretically underwhelmed?

I've had a lovely evening with a couple of friends - we went to Nando's for dinner, Tesco for snacks and Vue for entertainment. I'd been trying to get to see Les Mis since before it came out, and FINALLY made it this evening.

I enjoyed it. I should say that to start. By this stage it has been massively overhyped, but I kept my expectations low based on my opinions of the musical. I did enjoy it all, the music is fantastic, and I have always loved a few songs from it, some performances were wonderful, all shown off with some great camera work. But it hasn't changed my opinion of the story. I'm afraid I'm one of those pretentious* people who's read the book. Twice. Considering a third time. And I just find myself thinking 'in the book they do this' or 'oh, they've skipped all the background there'.** But more than that, I get frustrated with the emphasis - the book is a story of revolution, with love stories woven through, this version is a love story with a backdrop of (dare I say?) generic revolution. The lesson has been made sickly sweet, and the complex tale reduced to a shallow wisp. Is that too harsh?

I've been ruined by the book, for which I shouldn't make any apologies. So don't get me wrong, the movie entertained me, it generally kept my attention, but it didn't move me or carry me on any journey. But it was still a great night out, thank you girls for all the laughs and good times.



*Moi?
**Some movie versions are far better than their book counterparts - Stardust definitely, maybe even Lord of the Rings on a lazy reading day. I genuinely just think this one is a horrible injustice to the original.