I kind of liked the movie, which cuts out most of the self-indulgent bits and pares the story down to the essence. Even the movie doesn't manage to plausibly get across the initial impetus for that impromptu trip to Lisbon in the first place, though. It's got pretty visuals, however ... :)

I disliked this book so much... it was one of the quickest DNFs I can remember. All the hype for the book didn't help, of course. Still, the "self-indulging prattle" was just intolerable.