This has been a big year for book-to-screen adaptations, but they haven’t all been hits. Here are some of the worst adaptations of the year so far, according to Rotten Tomatoes ratings, with excerpts from reviews.
Adaptations Critics Hated:
Klara and the Sun (30% Tomatometer): “noxious sentimentality” that “strips away everything insightful and affecting from Ishiguro’s novel.”
Verity (31%): The “intensely stupid twist” makes the ending “inconceivably lazy.”
Practical Magic 2 (36%): An “overlong, muddled” story that “strips the franchise of its gothic charms.” This one does have a 90% audience score, however.
Adaptations Audiences Hated:
Finding Her Edge (50% Popcornmeter): This Netflix series has an “uneven plot, some predictable story arcs, and a forced love triangle.” Critics disagreed: it has an 87% Tomatometer score.
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (52%): “Certainly, no rope has ever been made that’s strong enough to support the amount of disbelief we needed to suspend.”
Cape Fear (52%): “In pursuit of an expanded canvas for Cady and the Bowdens, showrunner Nick Antosca has thrown in the kitchen sink, then the tumble dryer and the aircon unit.”
Overall Worst:
The Last Thing He Told Me (47% Tomatometer, 48% Popcornmeter): The second season of this series is a “thrill-light nothingburger of a story.”
Dishonorable Mentions:
Wuthering Heights and Reminders of Him both attracted a lot of discourse and low critic ratings (57% and 56%, respectively), but the audience scores are more forgiving (74% and 87%).
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