I never read the book, but I saw the TV mini-series remake that King was personally involved with and approved, and it was awful.
Personally, I think King's stories just don't translate very well to movies, unless (as with Kubrick's "The Shining") huge liberties are taken with the source material. Most adaptations I've seen of his stories were just bad.
When I heard they were making a movie of Doctor Sleep, knowing that the final 20% of the book is absolutely untranslatable to coherent movie content, I could not understand how they could close it. In the end, they more or less worked around the finale, which is basically a series of psychic battles fought remotely. It's a tolerable movie.
One example of a truly unfilmable King/Bachman novel is Thinner, though maybe it could now be done, at great expense, with AI (there was a ridiculous TV version, though).
I interviewed him, when I was aged 16, in 1983, and asked him about The Shining. He was in a conciliatory mood on the topic that day, but re-emphasized how little he thought of Kubrick's shot choices for the scene where Danny discovers Wendy reading his manuscript.
To that criticism, Kubrick responded over the years that if we had just been jump-scared by Jack suddenly appearing over Wendy's shoulder as she read, we would have felt relief and even started laughing to blow it off, which would have undermined the tension Kubrick was looking to build past this point in the scene.
> The Shawshank Redemption was fantastic for instance.
Eh it comes off as a corny and flat depiction of people who might otherwise be interesting. Romantic, but not a depiction of believable humans. And the problem certainly ain't the actors.
My criticism of Shawshank redemption is indeed particularly in response to it being placed number one on the IMDB list of greatest movies of all time. I believe people ranked it there as a result of emotional catharsis rather than ranking based on whether a movie best realized its potential, and I think my response is validated: the script for Shawshank redemption could have portrayed the characters as more three-dimensional than as recorded.
I've never read the book, but perhaps this criticism applies to the book as well. King certainly has a tendency to push fetishized characteristics that take the place of earnest characterization. This is certainly true of the Stand, the Dark Tower series, the Shining, Insomnia, Green Mile, and probably many others of his works. This is not an original take. See one popular opinion here: http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/stephen-king...
Of course, many of King's stories do seem to push "fetishized characteristics" as you call them: in The Shining, Danny had the power to "shine". In Green Mile, the protagonist had a magical healing ability. But what characteristics did the characters in Shawshank have? Both seemed fairly well-rounded to me, and certainly didn't have any supernatural abilities (which is one thing that set Shawshank apart from many King stories).
I do not need to read an opinion to know what to think about The Shawshank Redemption. I can think for myself.
I like the movie, it's one of my favourite films of all time, and I am sorry you feel I and a large contingent of people are misguided because they have a different opinion than yours or your favourite critic's.
