While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Yikes. This movie was not very good. The book was okay, not great. I still managed to slightly enjoy both. But really, the movie was pretty bad. The acting was pretty bad, except for Emilio Estivez who actually was enduring and cute. And of course, Morgan Freeman was awesome as he always is but his part wasn't major in this movie. The main character, Bryon, was sometimes enjoyable to watch and sometimes hard to watch. He's cute so that helps, but his acting wasn't great and it ruined some of the scenes. Cathy was cute too but her acting was pretty bad. Particularly, when she was driving the car when M&M was hallucinating. It was horrible. She had no emotion just like when she was in the hospital waiting room with her dad. She's not a good actress. And even Angela wasn't a great actress. The book was okay - somewhat enjoyable and besides the ending, the movie was true to the book. But there was so much more going on in the book, so much more detail (as is usually the case). The movie did a horrible job replicating that. I feel sorry for SE Hinton that her story was so poorly portrayed. Yikes.

This movie was really bad. If it would've been directed by Francis Coppola, it might've been better but, this movie was really bad. It didn't even end like the book did. Emilio did a good job acting but, it doesn't make up for the many other mistakes made. They made Emilio the center of the story when, the bond between Mark and Bryon was supposed to be the center. This movie really should've had S.E. Hinton involved and Francis Coppola should've directed. I loved the book, but this movie really depressed me at how much better it could've been. The casting was decent but again, couldn't save the movie. The ending is what really made it bad. If it would've ended like the book, it could've been a little better but not by much. See the movie for yourself. You might come to different conclusion than I did.

SPOILER I think that the book was funny and interesting. The movie was funny and interesting. The movie was not as good as the book. The movie did not go in to as much detail as the book did. The part in the book about Mark stealing the car to go and see his probation officer because he had stolen cars was not mentioned in the movie. Also the movie had Mark steal a car at the end with a police chase instead of having Bryan turn Mark in to the police for dealing drugs. He should have also had talked to Mark instead of kicking him out of the house right off the bat.

Contains Spoiler I read the book before I saw the movie, so the book influenced my opinion of the movie. The end of the book is really different from the end of the movie because at the end of the book Brian was afraid of Mark and at the end of the movie Mark forgave Brian. In the book Brian and Cathy are not together and in the movie they are still together. Otherwise, I liked the movie and the book because they were really different from each other.