One of the best adaptations and one of his best books, and it's interesting that the film works partly by being willing to ditch a lot of the metanarrative texture that I think makes the book unusually stylistically solid for a King novel.
The film's not a departure the way Kubrick's Shining was, but the writing-as-character disappears almost entirely, and as much as King was nowhere near first and nowhere near best at tying together and blurring levels of narrative, he made better and more interesting/elaborate use of it with the character of Misery Chastain and with Sheldon's writing-as-escape and writing-as-trial than he usually does in his novels. But Caan and Bates are so fucking good on screen that they can be the whole thing and the film doesn't miss the extra text layer.
@joshmillard: Agreed, the combination of William Goldman's script dumping all the stuff that wouldn't work on film + the actors + Reiner's direction of playing it almost like a (really) dark comedy make this one of the very best King adaptations. I think it's better than the book.
The film's not a departure the way Kubrick's Shining was, but the writing-as-character disappears almost entirely, and as much as King was nowhere near first and nowhere near best at tying together and blurring levels of narrative, he made better and more interesting/elaborate use of it with the character of Misery Chastain and with Sheldon's writing-as-escape and writing-as-trial than he usually does in his novels. But Caan and Bates are so fucking good on screen that they can be the whole thing and the film doesn't miss the extra text layer.