It's cliche to say, but the book was much better. It did the typical cutting of content (understandable) and changing of certain things (not-so-understandable), and were left with a pretty meh story/movie. However, some of the action scenes were cool, and there are plenty of references to other media that can be entertaining.

Special effects were good. The plot was predictable and the limited humor was mildly enjoyable.

Long and predictable.

I thought the movie felt a lot more like a cartoon that a film. The amount of scenes outside of the VR world were very minimal. For all intents and purposes the film is a video game version of Willy Winka and The Chocolate Factory, I saw a lot more potential for the story.My brother, who I took as my guest, is a big fan of the book. He felt the film paled in comparison to the book.