I can't speak to either the movie or the book, but I've found it interesting that whenever I see a movie before reading the source, I'm pretty happy with the movie, but rarely am I satisfied with the movie when I've read the book first.

The subtle nuances and key moments that I love are rarely translated to the screen. It's perfectly understandable, because they're two very different forms of fiction and the movie rarely has time to be much more than the Cliff's Notes version, but it's still disappointing.

When I've seen the movie first, I can appreciate it for its own sake.

One I remember rather well was the last Harry Potter movie. I had read the book a few years earlier when it was released. I was it a first time in a cinema and was rather disappointed, compared to the experience of reading this part of the book. But then I saw it again one month later and, expecting the movie instead of the book, had a much better time.

I had the experience. When I see the movie first, it is alright, but when I have read the novel first, the movie is usually disappointing.

(So far, I have had one exception: No Country For Old Men - I think the movie captures the book just perfectly.)

My one exception is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Thanks, I will put that on my to-read/to-watch list!

The book was brilliantly written and really captured a time and place. The movie was just meh.

Maybe, absent a book, the movie was just mostly forgettable. There were better films involving 80s financial types like Wall Street. But we’d probably remember Bonfire as a minor film that largely wasted star power through miscasting etc. rather than a bomb.