Obligatory "The book was better!"
But yeah, it was actually pretty good, better than I thought it would be. The changes to the story don't really matter since they still hit the essence of what the story was about.
I was interested to see how they would handle it, since the original story is told in one big stream of consciousness block by an old lady in a police station. You never get to read what anyone else in the room with her is saying, though she responds to/makes fun of them, or see the story from any other point of view. It's just one big, messy recollection of all the **** that has happened to her in her life. And yeah, the movie isn't like that, which is understandable. Instead of her spilling the beans all at once in the station, she reveals it slowly to her daughter as she tries to patch things up with her.
Kathy Bates was great. Really, everyone in the cast was fine.
The worst part was the music (made by Danny Elfman). So ****ing intrusive. Nothing kills the tension of a scene faster for me than a big orchestral "dun dun DUUUUN". Sometimes I wish I could just snip out all orchestral film scores, at least during any scene that isn't just "car driving from point a to point b" moodsetting. I know that's harsh, but god damn, 90% of them are just fancified laugh tracks, like the people in the audience are too stupid to know how to feel during a scene without glaring cues. Just stop. Leave it to the experts. The right music combined with the right visuals is orgasmically powerful, but the wrong combination does nothing but cheapen and drag movies down.