Bringing Down The House Movie And Book Comparison Essay

The book, Bringing Down the House, was written in 2002 and has since been a New York Times Bestseller and enjoyed by plenty. Six year later the movie, 21, was made based on Bringing Down the House and it was successful becoming the highest grossing movie in its first and second weekends after opening. Both depictions of this popular story received great feedback showing striking similarities all throughout the movie from the book but ultimately having differences that set one another apart. Bringing Down the House and 21 are undoubtedly and purposefully similar; however they definitely have their difference that contribute and deter from the depth of the story.
There are many similarities throughout the movie with the book that connect the

two and are important. In the beginning the most obvious similarity between the movie’s Ben and the book’s Kevin is the school that they attend, MIT University from which they excelled in because of the motivation and natural skill and talent for doing well in school. Kevin was motivated and was exceptionally smart and got very high grades in school, as well as Ben. Because of these high grades and being so smart Ben and Kevin were singled out to join the secret blackjack team that met down the same infinite corridor in same type room told about in the book that was brought to the screen in the movie. Ben and Kevin both were hesitant in joining the group but were later both persuaded to join. At the end after his card counting career Ben and Kevin both were caught and do not know specifically what they should do for the rest of their lives because card counting was all they knew.
Oppositely, there were plenty of differences throughout the story that set the book and movie apart from one another.

For example, at the beginning of the movie we learned that Ben had no father nor any sibling like Kevin did in the book. In the book, Kevin was motivated by his father to do well in school and get good grades to get a good job as well as being under his two sister’s successful shadows. In the movie, Ben had to be self-motivated and worked hard to get the grades that he wanted with only the support of his mother. Because of the similar plot the movie and book were pretty similar in the middle, but they did show different focuses. The book focused more on the card counting expertise and thoughts that came about because of the high stress lifestyle Kevin lived. In the movie they were able to focus on the party life of Ben because of his new lifestyle. A very significant difference was in the end of both stories and how one had a neat and tidy ending and one left the audience wondering what happened next. In the book Kevin does not know for sure what he should do for the rest of his life because of his attachment to the lifestyle of card counting. In the movie. Ben was sure he was not completely done card counting and even formed a new team to

continue.
In the adventure of Kevin’s life in the book he tells the author that the reason why he is telling this story is to explain himself and prove that what he did was not wrong, which I completely agree with.

Kevin is clearly very smart and the conventional route smart people take is getting high paying jobs, doing very important work. This was Kevin’s initial plan, however he decided to utilize his skills in a less conventional way. As continuously stated throughout the book and even the movie, card counting is not illegal. Kevin simply used his god given abilities to gain an advantage over someone else. The act of card counting is not wrong and Kevin should feel no remorse, however the things he did because he card counting such as lying to people including his friends and family is

wrong.
Both forms of telling the same story could be better to different people because of their preference of movies to books or vice-versa, but I choose the book being better. The book is better because it has the time and ability to go in depth into the story of Kevin’s life of a card counter. In the book, Bringing Down the House, the author, Ben Mezrich, does a good job giving the reader a picture of Kevin’s full life sharing important details of the hard time balancing his love life with his girlfriend back home and his “Vegas life” women, particularly Teri Pollack. The book also does a better job than the movie when going into Kevin’s inner thoughts like in the beginning when he was not so sure about card counting’s effectiveness and consistency. Kevin’s inner thoughts were always on display in the book which made the book more interesting by being able to see what it was like to be in his shoes as opposed to being on the outside looking in and sometimes being allowed in his head. The audience for the movie mostly had to go off of what he was thinking by what he said out of his mouth. Because of obvious restraints of telling the story in the form of a film exposed the lack of being able to know what he was thinking at all times, which unquestionably took away from the movie.
The book and the movie both do a very good job of explaining Kevin’s and Ben’s story respectively. Their differences do set them apart which can allow for one to be preferred over another, but their similarities make them unable to be talked about without the other being brought up. The audience gets to decide whether they think Ben or Kevin did something wrong or not, however no one can say for sure.