I agree. The whole time I was reading the book I was thinking "I'd probably enjoy this more as movie" and I was right (although only a bit, still didn't care much for the movie). Name dropping a bunch of references for references sake is more effective when you can see them.

Also it seemed clear to me that some chapters only existed to provide notes to a future movie production, and didn't need to be infodumped. (One chapter in particular the only thing that actually happened was he was sitting in class and letting his mind wander, IIRC, and did nothing to drive the plot forward, just infodump).