Originally, I was planning on reviewing the new movie “Flight Risk” as a tense psychological thriller is more my speed for a “scary movie” and I’m intrigued by a movie that has a cast of only three people. Alas, the release date was pushed back to a much odder January 24, 2025 timeframe.

An unexpected and rather subversive illness has kept my both my wife and myself indoors the past two weeks anyway, which gave me a chance to catch up on the newspapers that had stacked up from our recent travels. I came across Bonnie Jean Feldkamp’s editorial in the 9/23/24 issue of this fine publication and thought it would provide an excellent springboard into my second watch/read comparison piece.

In her piece, Feldkamp argues that “a movie does not offer the same benefits” as reading a book because “a movie is passive, not interactive.” I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment. Growing up, my family watched quite a few movies together and discussed those movies afterwards. Before you all have visions of my family with notebooks ready and analytical conversations happening around a fireplace, that’s not what I mean. We always had discussions about what we liked and didn’t like about the movie, what worked for the story and what pulled us away from it, who did well acting and who didn’t, what the story brought out for us or what it failed to deliver. We were all engaged throughout the movie, brains soaking everything in and analyzing it, and discussing it when we were together afterwards. Movies can absolutely offer the same benefits.

Feldkamp also says reading aloud is hugely beneficial, and I completely agree with that sentiment. Sharing a book with someone on that level is very impactful and something my wife and I often do. Listening to audiobooks is another way to get the benefit, even if that experience isn’t “with a loved one” as Feldkamp champions.

This time, as promised, I wanted to delve into a comparison between movie, book, and audiobook. Here is my choice of a great story to focus on:

MOVIE: “Home” (2015, PG, 94 min, watch it: DVD, Peacock)

AUDIOBOOK: “The True Meaning of Smekday” by Adam Rex, read by Bahni Turpin, published 2011 by Disney Hyperion

What life lessons can you learn from a 12-year-old named Tip, her cat named Pig and her new extraterrestrial travel mate? That really depends on the medium you use to learn their story. If you watch the movie, there are very few takeaways from the trio. Consume the book, however, and you’d be surprised just how much this odd trio can teach you.

Let’s start with the basic premise of the story. In the book, you start out listening to the main character, Gratuity Tucci (friends call her “Tip”), read her school report about what Smekday means to her. As anyone who hasn’t read this story would have no idea at all, the readers learn that Smekday is the replacement of Christmas for the human race and to commemorate the day that Captain Smek of the Boov alien race led to the take-over of Earth.

Tip hates the Boov, not just because of their claiming all of Earth and only leaving the humans the state of Florida, but because they took her mom away from her. She resists being moved from her home in New York before realizing she needs to try to find the rest of the humans to try and find her mom. She starts off on a cross-country journey in the family car, but as a 12-year-old, driving isn’t the best option.

After a calamity with her car, she has a chance meeting with a Boov mechanic that “improves” her car and joins her journey. Together, they start to find that Boov and humans don’t have to be enemies. They also find out there is a larger enemy coming that the Boov and humans might have to confront together.

Oh, and the Boov she met up with picked a name for humans to say and went with J.Lo. The book is hilarious. I really enjoyed the storyline, the originality, the unpredictability, and the vividness. What truly elevated the story to me, however, was the audiobook.

Bahni Turpin is a very talented voice actor and what she brought to this particular story was a voice for the Boov that was beyond anything my brain was even remotely tapping into in reading the book. She gave J.Lo such an interesting personality that leapt off the page even more than the writing suggested. I was entranced with her enthusiasm, sound effects, range of emotions, and impressive voice distinctions for each and every character. It remains my favorite audiobook for those very reasons. (I’ve actually searched Libby to find other audiobooks done by Turpin and listen to them just because she’s the reader!)

Now, let’s talk about the movie. They took this really rich environment and very original tale… and just butchered the heck out of it. This story has mature and complex concepts that would be a bit much for younger audiences, but instead of targeting an audience appropriate for the story or adapting the story to fit a wider audience, they just threw most of it out the window and made a “kid-friendly” movie.

Despite attracting Jennifer Lopez to the movie both as a voice actor and singer, they changed the Boov’s name from J.Lo to just “Oh” instead. Despite the story going from New York to Florida, then west to Arizona and New Mexico, this one has the Boov sending humans to Australia with a detour through Paris. The destructive and mean alien race threatening Boov and humans alike are treated trivially with a far different end resolution that was rather lazy writing. Significant supporting characters and storylines from the book were completely abandoned and replaced with Oh just wanting Boov friends.

So, is this what to watch, what to listen to, or what to read for you? I’m sure I didn’t sell the movie, but if you’ve never touched the book before, there could be some enjoyable though forgettable parts from the movie making it worth a watch (Jim Parsons does pretty well voicing Oh, though he’s no Bahni Turpin…). Reading the book is highly encouraged, though my main recommendation is to find the audiobook and revel in the world of Tip, her cat Pig, J.Lo and all the other wonderful characters Turpin’s voice brings such an animated life to in the snug comfort of your own imagination. Even better, listen to the book along with friends and family so you can all enjoy the journey.

Kent Kraft is someone who also takes issue with Feldkamp’s assertion that “[a] movie holds maybe a tenth of the context that the book of the same story holds.” Which book versus movie? Some books are just too vast for a movie, though people still try. Some books actually get expanded in movie form and become something more. “The Last of the Mohicans,” for instance, packs a major emotional wallop in movie form, more than I ever find reading James Fenimore Cooper’s novel.