However, hopefully that’ll change–apparently the novel’s just been reprinted, with a film tie-in cover(naturally with Delta’s face on the cover), and apparently that’s doing very well and in fact going into the bestseller lists. My eldest, Philippa, who’s 23 now, read it and loved it when she was 13 or so our second, Xavier, who’s 18, read it–encouraged by us–when he was 11 or so but their younger brother, our third child Bevis, who’s 15, has not bothered with it at all, and I’m not sure many of his friends, male or female, have read it, or even know of it either. The problem is also that Hating Alison Ashley, the book, is now 20 years old, and though kids who were at primary/early secondary school in the 80’s and early 90’s most likely read it, I’m not sure that’s the case now. By upping the age of the protagonists(and adding a romantic element that’s not in the book) it seemed to me that the film-makers were aiming at an older age group than the readers of the novel–which is generally read by older primary-school kids and maybe kids in the first year or two of high school. I guess that last thing was a blatant attempt to woo the teenage girl vote, but apparently Delta looks much too old for the role. I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t really comment on its quality, apart from the fact that it seemed odd indeed to me to make the characters older–in the novel they’re closer to 13 than 15–and also to cast Delta Goodrem as Alison Ashley. The young girls and families the movie’s aimed at may not have had time yet to go and see it, and may yet flock into the cinemas. Of course, it may yet recover–school holiday timing this autumn, at least in NSW, has been rather weird, because we had 4 days off at Easter, then back to school for two weeks, then schools are breaking up again on Friday for another two weeks. But in the second week, takings had dropped by 28 percent, suggesting word of mouth was crook, and certainly the reviews also have been rather underwhelming.
The film was released just before the Easter break, and in its first week 60,000 people went to see it. Another sad thing to report on the Australian film front, as yet another ‘great white hope’ looks set to segue into ‘big flat flop.’ Apparently, the film version of Robin Klein’s well-loved, funny, tender and whimsical novel of school and family life, Hating Alison Ashley, is not doing anywhere near as well as expected.
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