Rotten Potatoes 85%

Haley Norton
Movie Review
Rotten Potatoes 85%

I thought the movie was a bad representation of the book, Slaughterhouse Five. The movie managed to capture the main points of the movie, for example the deaths, the bombing of Dresden, and the families. It wasn’t until the end of the movie when I was alarmed with the actual setting of Tralfamadore. The idea of aliens did not come into play until the very end. Therefore confusing the reader of the frequent “flashbacks.” So in my case, I did not get the idea that Billy was travelling in time but rather having multiple flashbacks, until the very end when he is in the cage. Some scenes that were not presented well was when Billy walks in on Robert on the toilet and catches him reading a magazine. In the book the bathroom is dark inside and that is when Billy walks in, turns on the light, and sees his son, says hi and walks out. In the movie they had a full conversation. In the book there was no scene of a drive in movie with the family. That was unnecessary information that was added. Another added scene is when Billy has to pay off the police officer when Robert gets into trouble, that does not happen in the book. As small as these scenes may be, they are inaccurate to the book.
In the book Vonnegut describes Valencias death in one paragraph, in the movie she gets a full fifteen minutes. The book describes Valencia getting into a accident, and continue driving to Vermont. In the movie they show her driving like a mad woman, getting into/ and causing all these accidents. The book did not go into that much detail, therefore the movie was playing up a scene showing two different sides to Valencia. A concerned wife going to see her husband, or a psycho driver who will hurt anyone in her way as she goes to see her husband. Also in the book Billy buys Valencia a ring as a present. In the movie he buys her a car and makes it one big surprise where she is then asked to “follow the yellow brick road” which is the ribbon. In the movie they give Billy mans best friend, Spot. This dog is not in the book at all, but they decided to add it to the movie and also have the dog go to Tralfamadore at one point. There is no dog in the book, but the dog shows up when he is at his house, and his later companion when his wife dies. Adding animals confused me, and maybe a broader audience; thinking back to the text whether or not there was a dog in the book or not. If there was no Spot in the book, there should be no Spot in the movie.

When they finally do give the viewer a sense of Tralfamadore, it is inaccurate. Billy is already there with Spot in the movie, and down comes Montana. In the book she calmly asks

where she is, and so forth. In the movie she starts screaming and running around. So they added more drama than necessary to that scene. Overall they captured the main parts of the book, like Billy bouncing back and forth in time (which was slightly confusing to the reader because like me, I thought they were simply flashbacks) the death of Edgar Derby, the wife dying in front of the hospital, the plane crash, and Billy’s death while he is giving a speech in P.A. Although even in the death, the book does not say who the killer was, while in the movie it shows Paul Lazaro pulling out a gun and shooting Pilgrim. Beyond the minor details with the scenes, the movie captured the gist of things, like I stated above.  The director should have just paid closer attention to the text, not adding in words, animals, etc.