The novel version of Lisey's Story is one of the oddest books in King's bibliography. Despite being the author's self-professed favorite, it has never achieved much critical success (at least compared to many of his other works). Unfortunately, this adaptation of the material continues the bifurcation, providing a miniseries that contains all the necessary parts but seems to have little understanding of how to make them all work on screen rather than on the page.
For a very basic overview, Lisey's Story is the tale of Lisa Landon (Julianne Moore), a woman who--when audiences meet her--has recently lost her husband, famous author Scott (Clive Owen). While going through his personal things, "Lisey" discovers a "bool hunt" (scavenger hunt) in which Scott prompts her to remember some of their earlier moments together, including the repressed momentous discovery of an entirely different world (Booya Moon) that Scott is able to travel to. At the same time this is happening, Lisey is stalked by Jim Dooley (Dane DeHaan), a crazed Scott Landon fan who will stop at nothing to obtain the deceased author's posthumous papers.
Lisey's Story was always going to be a difficult book to adapt for the screen. It largely takes place in the head of a single character, it contains a ton of proprietary language (pet names, odd slogans, etc.), and it can be kind of a mess of flashbacks. All of those elements make their way into the final product--and ironically that is the show's biggest problem.
You see, Stephen King wrote the screenplays for each of these episodes, faithfully adapting his own source material. But 1:1 translations from book-to-screen rarely succeed. The mediums are so different that it usually takes a unique vision to make words (which can be so beautifully constructed and arranged on a page) pop into physical representation. Sadly, there is nothing unique here--just King doing his best to wrangle all his genius literary elements into some semblance of sense (which rarely happens) on screen.
Some material is fine, like Scott's familial backstory and any scene featuring him and Lisey (Moore and Owen have great chemistry on-screen together). But much is almost laughably poor, like the relationship between Lisey and her sisters (butchered from the book's representation) and the utter wasting of Dooley (a far too one-note performance here).
As much as it pains me to say it (considering that King is my all-time favorite author), what this version of Lisey's Story needed was a shepherd with a little distance from the material, able to pick out the key elements and add some creative flair using film/screenwriting skills. Such an approach may have unlocked a better sense of what was transpiring plot-wise and more genuine character interactions/emotions as a result.
As it stands, however, Lisey's Story is a straight-down-the-middle 5 stars in overall quality. It possesses all the key people, places, and things of Stephen King's novel (and has a wonderful score), but none of the tremendous emotion or storytelling depth.
