Odd Thomas is that rare movie adaptation of a novel that is so true to the source material that they are nearly indistinguishable from each other. Most of the changes made in the adaptation process are minor things that make the story work better for a movie rather than for a book. I'll be talking about those changes in a special spoiler section at the very end of the review so that those of you who haven't seen the movie or read the book can read this generalized review without dealing with spoilers.
I just recently read Odd Thomas so I could review it on the blog and I gave it a glowing review so if you want to check that out feel free to do so as it's a completely spoiler free review. However I wasn't dreading this movie adaptation despite having read the book first because I not only discovered the movie first, but I don't get as uptight about books being turned into movies as many people do. That's mostly because for the most part I often only get to see the movie and never get to read the book, so if I discover what changes are made to a story for it to be adapted from one medium to another, it doesn't bother me because I don't necessarily have that attachment to the book.
This story works so well as a movie. While I love the book, I did find it to be a little clunky in places just because of how Dean Koontz wrote it. Whereas I think the movie really streamlined it in a way that wasn't possible for the book. For example, because Stephen Sommers wrote and directed this movie, his sensibilities that I remember from movies like Tom and Huck, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra all of which I've seen at various points in my life, enhance what Koontz had already imbued the story with when he wrote the book.
For example, while I loved Odd and Stormy's relationship in the book, it's even better in the movie because of Sommers's wit and humour that I remember from the Mummy movies and The Scorpion King. Because the book is written in the first person most of the interaction between Odd and Stormy is shown through Odd's recollections of specific instances. However, in the movie, a lot of that interaction is moved into the dialogue and it works really really well. In fact my favourite line in the whole movie is when Odd arrives at the church for his and Stormy's picnic dinner and she asks, "You know why I call you Pooh Bear?" and Odd replies, "Because I'm so cuddly" to which Stormy replies, "'Cause his head is full of stuffin'!" and then runs off towards the door to the church in a flirtatious sort of way which you would normally see between a married couple on a sitcom. Which is pretty hilarious.
I think one of the reasons that Odd and Stormy's relationship works so well for me is because, while it's similar to the relationship I've seen dozens of times in comic books and comic book related movies and TV shows, it doesn't have the issues that those do where the love interest is just there and isn't really part of the protagonist's life as a superhero, even if they know their secret identity. This is a terrible example but in Spider-Man 3 Mary Jane is fully aware that Peter is Spider-Man but she isn't a part of that aspect of Peter's life and in that particular movie is resentful of him for it for absolutely no good reason at all. But I'm not here to review Spider-Man 3, trust me, I'll be getting to that one eventually. My point in bringing up that example is to show that Stormy knows about Odd's abilities and knows what he does with them and is supportive of him. Also, any problems she has with him using his abilities is purely because she is genuinely afraid that he is going to get killed on one of his missions since he isn't invulnerable. Which is a completely reasonable reason for having a problem with your partner's special abilities, unlike the whole Felicity wanting Oliver to stop being the Arrow, later the Green Arrow, and focusing on her thing from Arrow season 3.
Sommers got an amazing cast for this film. Anton Yelchin (rest in peace) played an amazing Odd Thomas and makes the character leap off the page. I first became aware of Yelchin in 2009 when I saw him in Star Trek as Ensign Pavel Chekov. He was amazing in that movie but aside from the next two Star Trek movies, Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond, I've never gotten around to seeing any of his other films, which I really should do because he was an amazing actor and his star got burned out too soon. While I enjoyed her cameo in That Awkward Moment I thought Addison Timlin really shined in this movie. Her portrayal of Stormy Llewellyn was solid and like Odd, really felt like the character in the book, but infused with Sommers's sense of humour. Her and Yelchin's on screen chemistry was palpable and solid, which I appreciate and made me believe that those two were a couple. Which, again, isn't always discernible in superhero movies when the love interest isn't really an important part of the plot. It also reminds me of the chemistry between Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.
It was really weird seeing Willem Dafoe in a movie where he wasn't playing a bad guy since he played the Green Goblin in Spider-Man (2002) and fairly frequently his characters are disturbed in some way so it was nice to see him play a straight out good guy for a chance. Though apparently he does play a sort of bad guy in Aquaman though I've never seen it. Dafoe plays a perfect Wyatt Porter, the chief of police that Odd works with. Oh and Patton Oswalt plays Little Ozzie in a cameo in the movie, though I'll talk about him in the spoilers section at the end of this review.
At first I thought that the movie took place in 2013 or 2014 even though the book takes place in 2003, the year it was written and originally published in. However, as the movie went along I slowly began to realize that the movie does take place in the early 2000s. Even though we see cell phones and computers with internet access, nobody in the mall scenes, or in outdoor scenes, are on cell phones texting or using social media or anything like that. They do whatever we did before Facebook, Twitter and Instagram became a thing. There isn't even a single reference to YouTube or anything like that. So that was pretty cool and refreshing since so many movie adaptations of books move the setting to whatever decade the movie came out during.
The movie version of Odd Thomas seems a little goofier and definitely not as creepy as the book felt at certain points. The only jump scare I actually experienced while I watched the movie last night was at the very beginning of the movie when Odd is having his dream about the bowling alley employees being shot and murdered. I also didn't get that constant feeling of dread watching the movie as I did when I was reading the book. And it was fun to watch.
Final Non-Spoiler Thoughts and Rating: Overall I absolutely loved Odd Thomas. It was quirky, fun, the dialogue was dripping with cheese and it's the perfect movie to watch on a Friday night either by yourself or with friends. It's a blast. If I did have one complaint is that there wasn't a whole lot of music in the movie. There's a few songs that play in the background during scenes between Odd and Stormy, particularly at the end, which I will get to shortly. But there wasn't much of an incidental score like there are in a lot of movies. I don't think it's a Stephen Sommers thing, as I remember there being a cheesy adventure style score in both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns and a big theatrical score in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but here there wasn't. It worked pretty well for this movie as it kind of underlined the danger Odd was putting himself in, but it was a bit jarring since I expected some sort of musical score in movies like this. I'm giving Odd Thomas 10/10 stars.
Okay, so I don't normally do this in my reviews as most of the time it just takes more work than is really necessary for the types of reviews that I actually do here. But for Odd Thomas I thought I'd make an exception because there are some changes made during the adaptation process that I would like to talk about but can't without spoiling anything. So here is the spoiler section of this review. If you haven't seen this movie or read the book don't read this section.
A lot of the changes made to adapt the novel into a movie are mostly little things like eliminating characters, reducing roles, and shifting things around so that certain pieces of dialogue, like the Pooh Bear thing between Odd and Stormy, are incorporated into the story proper, rather than being recollections that Odd makes.
One of the changes made was made to the opening of the movie where Odd is trying to apprehend Harlo Landerson for the murder of Penny Kallisto. In the book, Porter tells Odd to wait in the child's bedroom and they have their conversation in there, where Porter destroys a Barney the Dinosaur blow-up chair. In the movie however, Odd waits on a bench by the pool outside until Porter can come talk to him and no Barney the Dinosaur blow-up chair was harmed in the making of this movie.
Another change that was made is a fairly major one. In the book Odd's mom is living in a house in Pico Mundo, but is so mentally handicapped that she can't handle any form of responsibility and threatens to shoot herself with a pistol if any kind of stress is put on her. Odd's dad is also around and he has a younger wife and a well off lifestyle. In the movie however, things are a little different. In the movie, Odd's mom was put away in a mental institution by his father in a flashback due to a mental instability. Unlike the book though, it appears that Odd's mom has the same abilities that Odd does and it made her go insane to the point where she was threatening to hurt people besides herself. Odd's father also isn't in the movie outside of this brief flashback at the beginning of the movie. Odd doesn't talk about his dad much in the movie, so I assume that unlike in the book, Odd continued to live with his dad until he was old enough to move out on his own and had his job at The Grille. This would change Odd's entire reason for helping the dead. It would also give him more motivation to keep his abilities a secret. Which is kind of lacking in the book as it seems like a lot of Odd's friends know his secret in the books.
There are quite a few characters missing in the movie too. Ozzie is there, but his role is limited to a quick cameo while Odd and Stormy are hiding out from what ended up being Robertson's ghost and it's not really clear what his role in Odd's life is. In the book Ozzie is a successfully published author and is Odd's mentor in the ways of writing. He also knows about Odd's special abilities. In the movie it's not really clear how much Ozzie actually knows or whether he's an author or not. Which is a shame because I feel like Book Ozzie as played by Patton Oswalt would've been amazing. Alas I have to settle for the movie version of Ozzie as played by Patton Oswalt instead.
The character of Lysette also plays a much bigger role in the movie than she does in the book. In the book she appears at the Porters's house for a BBQ just before Odd goes to have dinner with Stormy at the church. In the movie she appears there as well, but then she's murdered by Varner and Eckles, two of Robertson's associates who had infiltrated the police department, and then later her ghost leads Odd to the truck where the bad guys had planted the bomb after the massacre in the Green Moon Mall.
Which brings me to the big spoiler in the movie and the book. During the mall shooting, Stormy is at work at the ice cream shop and is there when the shooting starts happening. In the movie Odd sees her after he's taken out Gosset, who turns out to be the shooter, and she seems to be fine. But in the book she's nowhere to be found. In the book, Odd becomes an unreliable narrator as he talks about Stormy as if she's still around. But, she was killed during the shooting and Odd was with her ghost. In the book the unreliable narrator bit hides this fact from the reader. However, in the movie there are some telltale signs that Stormy has been killed. Odd had mentioned previously that the dead don't talk. After he sees her in the ice cream shop after the shooting, Stormy doesn't stay another word in the rest of the movie. Other signs are there too, like it shows Stormy's wine glass is full while Odd's isn't during the montage of them spending time together after Odd gets out of the hospital at the end of the movie.
Also in the movie, Stormy's backstory is cut out. In the book her parents were killed and she was sent into foster care, but her foster father sexually assaulted her, resulting in her going to stay with her uncle, who was a priest at the church where Odd and Stormy had their dinner date. It's the reason that Stormy and Odd haven't had sex yet. Of course this whole thing was completely taken out of the movie and Odd doesn't even refer to it in his voiceover narration at any point when talking about Stormy.
Those are pretty much the big things I wanted to mention in terms of changes and spoilers in the movie and the book. Like I said, the other changes are minor ones that don't really affect the plot all that much. For example, Odd's boss, Terri isn't in the movie at all. She's not a huge player in the book either, but she's not even mentioned in the movie, so we don't know who owns The Grille or anything like that. We also don't actually see Odd's landlady, Rosalia and the whole thing about Odd telling her that she's still visible, meaning she's still alive, every morning. All we see of her is a light going on in her condo when Odd is trying to get Robertson's corpse out of his condo and is going to take Rosalia's car.
That's it for this spoiler section so if you got this far then you don't care about spoilers or anything like that. I'll be back on Monday for the second to last Teddy Ruxpin VHS review and I'll be back with other reviews next week too. Later.
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