After reading the famous book “Looking for Alibrandi”, every reader decides to get into the screen story and analyze it, compare it to the book in order to find differences and similarities.
Let’s start with the similarities
The biggest similarity for every reader will be the way the author of the book and the movie director have portrayed Josephine Alibrandi. In both the movie and the book Josephine was stubborn and compassionate. It is important to mention that an actress Pia Miranda, who played Josephine Alibrandi in the movie, did a fantastic job! Her screen chemistry with John and Jacob was just exactly they did it on the book pages – a strong teen romance and forever-lasting friendship between two people was perfectly shown by means of the motion picture.
One more similarity – the same events portrayed in the book. For example, the director has perfectly shown “National Wog Day” or tomato day. These events were simply alike the ones described within the book. The legendary tomato day showed the close link between Josephine Alibrandi’s family once they were getting together in order to celebrate so Italian day.
Full lines of the characters were successfully transferred to the big screen, which is the other similarity between the movie and the book. Perhaps, one of the reasons why the film is so similar to the book is that the author of “Looking for Alibrandi” was an actual script writer too!
Now it’s time to proceed to the differences between the book and the movie
Comparing to the book plot, the movie “Looking for Alibrandi” shows up some events earlier or later than they are mentioned in the book. Moreover, some scenes were absolutely cut out. For instance, if you read the book, you will find out that in the movie the death of John Barton was shown quite earlier than it was described on the book pages.
One more interesting example of the differences between the book and the movie is that within the book pages Ivy Lloyd was called Posion Ivy for the reason that it had some relation to her name. Nonetheless, in the movie they changed her name to Carly, which was a real confusion! The whole reason she was called Poison Ivy was because her name was Ivy, so the movie fans didn’t realize why they named her Carly.
To add more to the differences section, it is important to mention that they have totally cut out one of Josephine’s best friends – Lee. Thus, Josephine hangs out only with Anna and Sera.
The final difference was that in the book Jacob made a decision to break up with Josephine, being assured that he was under a heavy pressure once he was near her. For this reason, Josephine was totally devastated and sad. Nonetheless, in the motion picture Jacob tells Josephine he wants to always be by her side right at the end of the film and they all start dancing having Tomato day. Why? No one knows.
