'WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE'......THE PERILS OF BOOK CLUB CINEMA......

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019)  If nothing else, we're consistent.....

              We considered ourselves the very last reader who finally got around to cracking open Maria Semple's best selling book.........and we're thinkin' we're the very last blogger to weigh in on the barely seen film.........

                ........which sank like a stone at near record speed........until its sank-like-a-stone record was broken by the instant, disastrous film version of "The Goldfinch"......(which we promise to get around to...)

                  Which amplifies our dictum that adapting popular best selling novels requires the nerves and skill of that Wallenda guy who performs high wire walks over canyons.......

                   Cause it's about the same thing........and your chances of plunging off the wire are 90% higher than a Wallenda.........

                    So where did this movie go wrong?

                    Simple. With Bernadette, the elusive, tormented, ultra witty genius architect who disappears before her techie-genius husband can have committed during a mental illness intervention.......

                   She remains elusive for a good deal of the book, but you're made to understood her pain and suppressed rage.......coming primarily from the willful, cruel destruction of her most brilliant architectural project.......

                    The film tosses this backstory off in too much of a hurry........because it's not designed for deep character exploration.....it exists only as a showcase for Cate Blanchett's  take-no-prisoners,
gimme-my-Oscar performance as Bernadette.........gobbling up the movie like a tiger just thrown a hunk of fresh meat.

                      Not that she isn't damn fun to watch as she unloads her white-hot temper and wit on a world that can't comprehend that her thwarted creativity is driving her over the edge.....

                      But somewhere in the script's adaptation, the mystery, poignancy and humor of the novel got flattened out, sanded down.........or left out altogether......

                    So what you've got left here is a pale imitation of the book.......with most of its plot points repeated, but minus the artistry and insights that you'd get in Semple's prose..

                      Hence the movie showing up dead 'n buried.....both in theaters and the bottom of the Wal-Mart DVD shelves......

                      We will credit director Richard Linklater and Blanchett for making it watchable and even modestly entertaining in more than a few scenes.........

                       But given the massive staying power of the book, it sadly stands as one hell of
a swing-and-a-miss........1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)

                        BQ memo to directors and screenwriters........Book Club Cinema ain't for sissies.......you want to bring a much-loved book to the screen and garner the same accolades the book received?  You'd better read it close enough to understand why it was so loved.......and figure out how in hell to translate that into a movie.......

                        As always, you're welcome, Hollywood.