Occasionally the film version of a novel is successful enough to make a comparison between the two helpful in understanding the strengths of both…. [Such is the case for] George Roy Hill's adaption of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five.

While [screenwriter Stephen] Geller has imposed a sense of order to improve the visual adaptation, director George Roy Hill … has wisely chosen to eschew any sense of sensationalism in what could have been misconstrued by some as nothing more than another, if somewhat bizarre, science-fiction film. The movie has a fluttering circle of white light grow out of the skies and pause outside Billy's bedroom window; then he is promptly pixilated off the screen. In the book Vonnegut describes the abduction as involving a saucer one hundred feet in diameter, complete with an imprisoning cone of purple light and zap gun as well. The Tralfamadorians in the movie are...