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Quick Answer: On most plot points, The Family Fang is a faithful adaptation of the source novel by Kevin Wilson. But readers will spot some minor differences: Buster’s name is changed. Annie’s love life is omitted. Caleb has become the primary villain, while Camille is more passive. More significantly, the tone is not an exact fit with the book. Still, most fans will be satisfied that key story details are preserved.

We all know readers are predisposed to hate the movie version, but fans of Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang should not have too many bones to pick with The Family Fang (2016), a mostly faithful translation of the book. Helmed by Arrested Development (2003 - )‘s Jason Bateman and premiering at Tribeca Film Festival 2016, The Family Fang preserves a number of wholly intact scenes and driving plot arcs from the original story.

The basic story is the same: almost from birth, Annie Fang (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter Fang (Bateman) have been players in the disruptive performance art of their eccentric parents, Caleb (Christopher Walken) and Camille (Maryann Plunkett). As adults, actress Annie and writer Baxter try to distance themselves from the family chaos but find their lives mired in drama and dysfunction. When Caleb and Camille disappear, in what is either a grand artistic gesture or a tragic death, the younger Fangs question if they were ever more than artistic props to their single-minded parents.

Most of the small-scale omissions or adjustments from novel to screen are sensible updates due to the time constraints of feature film compared to literature. That said, there are several intriguing differences that bookworms will notice.

Here are a few that we noticed:

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Name Change

Buster’s name has been changed to Baxter. It’s hard to say why, unless Bateman felt Buster would remind audiences too strongly of his fictional brother on Arrested Development. Strangely, the young actor who plays Baxtor’s childhood counterpart, Kyle Donnery, is credited as “Young Buster Fang.”

Suzanne Crosby

In the book, Buster’s new girlfriend is a student whose writing fascinates him after he visits the college class to lecture on the writing process. In the film, the male teacher of the class is cut out, and Suzanne becomes the teacher. The film also changes her characterization: in the movie, Suzanne appears thin and professionally dressed, and Annie comments on how cute Suzanne is. In the book, no one comments on whether she is cute or not. Suzanne is described as “short and heavyset, her eyes tiny and clouded behind a pair of wire-framed glasses… Her pale skin was crowded with a crazy pattern of freckles and her thick fingers were covered with dozens of cheap rings. Her big toe was poking out of her busted-up sneakers” (135). Notably, in the book, Suzanne’s level of attractiveness is not the focus. Instead, it is Suzanne’s writing that draws Buster to her. Annie reflects after reading Suzanne’s short story, “The story wasn’t great, a little too obvious, but she could see how it would appeal to Buster, her brother being obsessed with undeserved pain” (149). In the movie, we don’t hear about Suzanne’s writing. The book develops Suzanne’s and Buster’s interactions into a relationship, while the film only has time to show it as a crush or the beginning of something.

Bonnie/Mr. Delano

The movie has combined art student Bonnie and high school teacher Mr. Delano into one character. In the book, Bonnie is an art student who works with the Fangs on certain happenings that are not pictured in the film. She then shows up later as the legal wife to Caleb in his new (fake) identity. Mr. Delano is the teacher who conspires with Caleb and Camille to cast Annie and Buster as Romeo and Juliet in their high school play. The film instead creates the character of Miss Delano (Linda Emond), the teacher who shows up later as Caleb’s wife.

Does Caleb Sleep with Bonnie/Miss Delano?

In the book, Caleb’s legal marriage to Bonnie is apparently only for art’s sake. Caleb is the stepfather to Bonnie’s twin boys and not the biological father (we are told Bonnie’s ex-husband left her with twins). The book does not specify with total clarity whether Caleb ever sleeps with Bonnie, but it never declares that he does.

In the film, Camille and Caleb reveal that Caleb is the father of the twins, and Caleb has an ongoing sexual relationship with Miss Delano. The difference suggests an important shift in Caleb’s character. The book paints Caleb’s obsession with his art as high-minded and lofty, however unfeeling it makes him toward his children. In the movie, since Caleb has started a sexual relationship with another woman, this artistic commitment feels undermined, as does the artistic and romantic union of Caleb in Camille, which comes across as more pure and total in the book.

Caleb as Villain, Camille as Victim

In the book, Annie’s and Buster’s anger toward their parents is more evenly directed at both figures. In the film, Caleb is demonized as the primary villain. Camille forcefully objects when Caleb suggests that he did not want the children except to use them in his art. When revealing Caleb’s sexual relationship with the other woman, Camille appears more fragile and hurt. In general, she shows more emotion and seems to object more to Caleb’s plots. While a reader of the book could intrepret the couple’s dynamics along those lines, this reading would be more subjective based on subtler cues. The imbalance in their relationship is more extreme in the film.

The Family Fang (2016)

Annie’s Love Life is Left Out

In the book, Annie’s escape from LA is partly triggered by her ex-boyfriend, who reappears and tries to coerce her into joining him in a cabin retreat while he pens the next script for the blockbuster franchise that recently fired her. He leaks to the press that they are still together, threatening that if she does not play along, the fallout will damage her fragile career. Meanwhile, Annie has slept with a female co-star, an impulsive move that has also been featured in the press. At the end of the book, Annie makes a comeback through starring in a new indie film called Favor Fire, whose director Lucy Wayne gave Annie her first big break. The ending shows Annie falling for Lucy in what appears to be the first healthy romance of her life.

The Drinking and Dysfunction Don’t Feel the Same

While Annie and Baxter still attempt to overcome their drinking and pill-popping in the film, the book’s ability to enter their heads emphasizes their need to self-medicate at a more absorbing, immersive level. In the film, we hear Annie and Buster talk about their addictions more than we feel included in that mind-altered experience. Moreover, in the book their sardonic humor about their bad habits feeds into the absurd, comedic environment, whereas the movie’s mentions of drinks and pills feel more earnest, weighty and worried.

Tonal Shift

While all the above points are comparatively minor, a more significant question is whether the film has adapted the overall mood and style of the novel. On one level, the film succeeds in capturing the dark dysfunction and black humour of many moments. The themes are carried onscreen and sometimes (as in the analysis of the purpose of the Fangs’ art) even more neatly extracted for the audience.

On the other hand, the film arguably could have benefited from a slightly larger-than-life, exaggerated visual world to match the feel of the book. In one of the book’s promoted reviews on Amazon, author Hannah Pittard calls the novel “The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and a “total blast.” A touch of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums-style visual storytelling might have made the movie more of a blast. A story about the surreally talented and strange Fangs calls for a more stylized filmic language. Bateman has gone instead in the other direction: the naturalistic, subdued camera of realism and intimate, personal dramas. While this style is more popular in today’s landscape, the realist camera denotes feelings of seriousness, lifelike representation and emotional weight. (Perhaps this is where the Virginia Woolf half of the story comes in.) Still, while the book is awash in dark familial tension, its absurd hilarity might have been better expressed by a colorful, imaginative visual world instead of this less fanciful, ultimately somber approach. Nonetheless, how well the tones match is a matter of opinion and highly open to debate.

As we’d expect, the film also finds ways to condense time by moving events along more quickly and placing plot points in different settings. For example, Annie and Buster hear The Vengeful Virgins’ rendition of “Kill All Parents” (the first clue that Caleb and Camille are alive) at their yard sale, instead of when Suzanne brings the record over thinking Buster would like it, and they never get time to hold an art show for Camille’s paintings.

The film also makes Annie present whenever Buster talks about his new story-in-progress, The Children’s Pit (in the book, he sends her chapters to read). The camera lingers on Kidman’s face as she absorbs his literary processing of their childhood. These moments demonstrate that the film has zeroed in on the story’s core focus on the relationship between brother and sister and their attempt to pull each other through a dark time. This is the story of their coming together as family while detaching from the parents who fail to fully empathize with them as human beings.

While we can debate the larger tonal changes, overall it will be hard for fans of Fang to fault this movie for leaving the book too far behind.