The movie had very poor effects and the dialog was terrible. Many things were repeated with a few words switched around and the actors sounded very forced. But, that's not even the worst of it. The movie followed the book very poorly and the plot was not explicit. If I had not read the book prior to watching the film, I would have been completely lost. The plot moved too quickly and gave no details to what was happening. I had very high expectations set for this film because of the book. The book is an amazing action packed adventure with a great story that would make a perfect science fiction/action film. But that didn't happen. There were not nearly enough action scenes compared to the book, and the ones that were present were very, well, bad. The CGI was awful and the dramatic slow motion, cringe-worthy. I was disappointed and appalled, to say the least. The movie was made as if it was thrown together without any thought. One of my favorite aspects from the books, and what I was hoping to get a lot of in the film, was the character development. Max and her five "siblings" are very unique with different personality traits who battle many personal problems throughout the story. They all develop beautifully as characters, learning about themselves and their abilities, but sadly that was not present in the movie. The characters did not seem to learn anything important about sticking together, which was one of the biggest themes of the book. I will admit that the makers and the cast of this movie were not famous and may not have been experienced enough to make a hit film. The director was not someone that I recognized. Maybe Maximum Ride was a low budget film and they didn't have a lot to work with. There's a number of thing that could have been happening behind the scenes that may have caused this movie to be below what I had hoped for. The actors weren't even that bad. The portrayed their characters the way I would have seen them, but the lines and dialog that was fed to them was repetitive and somewhat cheesy. It was probably difficult to work with. Again, the idea for this movie was in the right place, and maybe if they would have had a bigger budget and put more thought into the script, this could have been a blockbuster film. I would have loved to see one of my favorite books become an astounding movie adaptation. But, sadly, we'll have to make do with what it is, and what it is is a poorly made movie, and frankly a waste of anyone's time, that doesn't even come close to the literature that it was based off of.
