Right, during November’s lockdown, I read Our Chemical Hearts for the first time and while it is a story about a whiney white boy who builds up a girl in his head, which isn’t my usual favourite, I bloody loved it. (Result of being locked down perhaps?)
After I finished the book, I decided to watch the adaptation, which had been on my Watch List on Amazon Prime since it came out and well…
Ok, so I gave the book 4 stars (you can find my goodreads here) and I gave the film 1.5 stars (see my letterboxd here), so what happened? How did I enjoy a story so much and dislike it so much at the same time?
First off – I have a lot of respect for Lili Reinhart and I think she did an alright job as the onscreen Grace Town and Austin Abrahams did the best he could with the 2D version of Henry Page he was given and this is in no way a slight to either of them or any of the other cast and crew members of the film. The film had some major issues for me though. It had absolutely none of the charm of the book. One of the things I loved about the book was the dynamic of the Page family. Henry’s relationship with his parents and his sister was so funny and comfortable and this was just completely left out of the film. I know there is less time on screen, but the Page family had none of their banter. Look, if they could have that kind of family relationship in Easy A, they could have had it here. Sadie was barely even present and we didn’t get to see any of her mischievousness, which I was really looking forward to after reading about it.
Something else the film lacked was Henry’s friendship group. Yes Lola and Murray were there and Lola was still gay (thank God), but the two of them were criminally underused in the film.
I adored the Henry/Lola/Murray friendship and was super excited to see them onscreen together napping in each other beds, rescuing each other when drunk and playing video games together. So, that was kind of disappointing.
Right, let’s talk about Grace Town.
In the book she is essentially a Manic Pixie Dream Girl – Henry meets her and builds her up in his head. In the boo, she is this incredibly traumatised girl who is grieving and feeling guilty about her growing relationship with Henry. What happened to her is revealed slowly and I did wonder how this was going to be done in the film. I think Lili Reinhart did a good job with the many complexities of Grace Town, but again, the sweeter parts of her relationship with Henry were nonexistant on screen. There was lots of cute banter and flirting in the book which felt very glossed over in the film, though I did think the day after the Halloween party was done well in the film. I just wanted the Ricky Martin Nups scenes and to see them interacting within the confines of being friends as well as being lovers. There are several moments in the book where Grace is part of the Henry/Lola dynamic but this doesn’t really happen in the film. The film just made it look like it was a superficial toxic relationship with no real depth and while it was toxic, at least in the book, we saw Henry and Grace’s motivations, while the film made me wonder what exactly the attraction was between them. They didn’t even seem to be particularly good friends.
Weirdly, in the book, I really felt for Henry and the constant gaslighting from Grace. I understood her behaviour, but I still felt like she was unfair to Henry, that she knew that not engaging with his romantic advances would be the best thing for the two of them. She knew exactly what she was doing, the scenes around her birthday show that. However, when it comes to the film, I was totally Team Grace throughout the entire thing. I described the book as basically being about a whiney white boy, but screen Henry was on a whole other level. He came across as being really entitled and he wasn’t even particularly nice to Grace.
Is that weird? Liking Book!Henry and not Book!Grace but disliking Screen!Henry and liking Screen!Grace? I mean, Henry is our protagonist and the book is told from his point of view, so we are in his head which gave me time to get to know him, unlike the film, where he seemed a bit 2 dimensional, so I suppose it isn’t much of a surprise.
So, basically in this round up of book vs movie – the book wins. Pick up your copy here.
Have any of you watched and or read Chemical Hearts? Let me know your thoughts below!
The Perks of Being a Bookworm 