OK, I'll admit it: I've never read the book. But I have seen many movie versions of it, and truthfully, I think this is one of the best. I really enjoyed this movie!

I was feeling trepidatious about it, since the reviews had been almost universally bad, but decided to go ahead anyway...I'm a sucker for really good previews, and often pay a high price for my gullibility...

But this was great. Not only a good storyline, everyone out to find the big treasure, but good characters and character development (and Emma Thompson, she was SO INCREDIBLY CUTE! but maybe I'm just noticing cats more because of our new kitten Wilson...)

A big part of the fun was seeing all the pirate stereotypes changed into outer space equivalents; for instance, Long John Silver's parrot becomes a tiny morphing alien who is not only cute and funny, but his name is (of course) Morphy...made me laugh. And it goes on and on and on.

No, the transfer of the story doesn't always make sense, and the physics police would have hauled all these people away in an instant...but the setup was good enough that it works. It works really, really well. So get a copy, pull up a chair, and fasten your seat belt...it's a wild ride.