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Book Comparison
The movie
Like Water for Chocolate is very different from the book. It lacked
the detail and description appealing to the senses of taste and smell
that the book was overflowing with. It even left out certain small events
that were crucial to the story, and if the book isn't read before, the
movie could be very confusing. The characters weren’t well developed
at all and Tita seemed a mere stranger, opposed to in the book, when you
really got to know Tita on a personal level and why she chose to do the
actions she did. The movie lacked the certain something that helped keep
the reader interested in the book.
The characters in the movie were not well portrayed as they were described
in the book. They do not look very Hispanic which doesn't make it seem
as authentic as it did in book. Many events that would pull the story
together at the end occurred in the beginning before it really made any
sense. For example, we find out who Gertrudis’ real father was in
the beginning, before it had any meaning. In the book, finding out about
it at the end, allows us to compare the mothers love for Gertrudis’
father, to Tita and her love for Pedro. The movie doesn’t play out
Mama Elena as tough and strict as she was in the book. Of course she is
mean in the movie, but it makes you feel more sorry for her, than mad
at her. The book makes her a bad guy, and the movie makes her a struggling
mother, afraid to show her true feelings. We see this when they show her
in her bedroom crying. While in the book, Mama Elena never cried for sorrow,
only when she was cutting Onions.
The movie flew by so fast; as you should know, in the book, each chapter
is a different month, starting in January. In the movie, we made it to
March in only 25 minutes, clearly showing how it cuts out so many small
events and so much description. Without the description, it makes the
movie plain, and not at all eye catching, not to mention confusing. It
leaves out the two main senses, seen so clearly in the book, which are
taste and smell.
The key things that hold the movie together are the main, broad events
that must occur in order for the plot to proceed. If the book were written
to the movie, it would be very short, choppy, and confusing. The movie
is definitely no comparison to the book, if we were to compare it at all.
It leaves out the little things the book so impressively brought to life.
Like Water for Chocolate is a good book, but an okay movie. There
are such big differences. Like the fact that they leave Rosaura’s
baby Roberto with out a name, and how they jump from event to event without
any intervention in between.
Bottom line, the book and movie are around the same plot, but the movie
lacks in detail and character description that the book so well represents.
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