The Favourite Game: the movie

Mark A. Murphy · Post by **Mark A. Murphy** » Fri May 25, 2007 5:44 am

Has anyone seen the Canadian produced movie of The Favourite Game? I saw it last summer and although I found the film quite engaging, it really couldn't touch the greatness of the book. I would like to see what the director Philip Kaufman (Unbearable Lightness Of Being and Henry and June) would make of it. He has a magic touch when translating books to screen.

When will somebody write the film script for Beautiful Losers? Do we have any genius screen writers among our number?

Charles Axis · Post by **Charles Axis** » Tue May 29, 2007 2:15 am

I've watched it several times since acquiring the DVD a few years ago via eBay. It’s a decent enough adaptation of the novel that certainly has its moments but falls a bit flat in places. J.R. Bourne does the role justice but some of the other actors are a bit wooden. Overall though it’s kind of cool that it was just made.

It would certainly be a challenge for any director to bring Beautiful Losers to the screen and do it justice. I can’t see it happening any time soon though…

John Etherington · Post by **John Etherington** » Wed May 30, 2007 5:20 pm

I never got to see "The Favourite Game", but I suspected it would be rather wooden. Pity they didn't give the role to Dustin Hoffmann in his "post-Graduate" days. I would think that it would be an impossibilty to transfer "Beautiful Losers" to the screen successfully. It's success surely comes from the use of language and the effect that it has on the imagination. However, I have occasionally been surprised by a screen adaption...most notably by the movie of Hesse's "Steppenwolf". However, that only had one major dream/surrealist sequence with the Magic Theatre, which was at the end of the movie. Thank God, Ken Russell never
got his hands on "Beautiful Losers"!