The film of V for Vendetta carries the following credit line: "Based on the graphic novel illustrated by David Lloyd." Alan Moore's name is nowhere to be seen. There's nothing unusual in that. Moore has disassociated himself from all Hollywood product, explaining: "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was the reason why I decided to take my name off all subsequent films."

Few who have seen League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would want to argue with that. But even though his refusal to have his name on the credits is part of a general policy, Moore seems to harbour a special resentment towards the Joel Silver and Wachowski brothers production of V for Vendetta. As the New York Times wrote at the time of its release:

"To him, the movie adaptation of V for Vendetta is not the biggest platform yet for his ideas: it is further proof that Hollywood should be avoided at all costs. 'I've read the screenplay,' Mr Moore said. 'It's rubbish.'"

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw agreed with that latter point:

"Valueless gibberish. Yet another graphic novel has been bulldozed on to the screen, strutting its stuff for an assumed army of uncritical geeks – a fanbase product from which the fanbase has been amputated. This film manages to be, at all times, weird and bizarre and baffling, but in a completely boring way. Watching it is like having the oxygen supply to your brain slowly starved over more than two hours."

It's safe to say that Bradshaw didn't enjoy it very much. His review is so much fun, it's worth quoting more:

"V For Vendetta is such an odd mixture: partly naive post-punk posturing, betraying the original's 1981 origins, and partly well-meant (but very American) condescension towards London and Britain. Like tourists with a phrasebook, the Wachowskis get people to say "bollocks" a fair bit, and there is a pastiche of The Benny Hill Show. On the higher end of the cultural scale, V declaims Shakespeare, and in honour of Guy Fawkes's subversion in the age of James I, reels off lots of Macbeth. But he fails to quote the only appropriate lines: the ones about it being a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

The best that can be said for the aforementioned Benny Hill moment is that it is true to its inspiration. That's to say, it isn't in the least bit funny. Yet as far as interpreting V for Vendetta goes, that absurd scene is the least of the film's crimes. I can understand why Alan Moore might have disliked it so much. Some of the changes are cosmetic and forgivable, if pointless. (Why change Susan to Sutler, for instance? Is it supposed to be a blend of Susan and Hitler?) Some do serious injustice to the book's complexity and deliberate ambiguity. Alan Moore again, in an excellent interview with Mile High comics:

"I actually don't think it's right to kill people. So I made it very, very morally ambiguous. And the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think, and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history."

In the film there is no such doubt. V is a ruthless killer, but that's made to look pretty cool. With the knives and bullet-time camera work, the deaths might even be said to be fetishised. Otherwise, V is a straightforward – and correspondingly dull – good guy. And like most good guys (Frank Miller's creations aside) he is a liberal – which is very different to his troubling presentation in the book. As Alan Moore explained in that same Mile High interview:

"It seemed to me the two more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism. This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism versus current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged. I mean, I think that any references to racial purity had been excised, whereas actually, fascists are quite big on racial purity."

The fascists in the film are indeed defanged, but it's also notable that they are far less human than those in the book. Moore and Lloyd present rounded characters who aren't simply bad. Their descent into extreme Thatcherism is understandable, if also unforgivable. We are shown something of ourselves in them – and that makes the book all the more effective and frightening. In contrast, the villains in the film just seem daft (even if they're a bit like George W Bush and his neo-con crew).

In short, then, the book is far, far better. But here's the thing: I quite enjoyed the film. I was bored by the end, but the first hour was interesting enough. If I hadn't already read the book, I might have thought even more of it … maybe.

But what did you think? Is the film a poor shadow of the book? If you haven't read the book, what did you think of the film? And can anyone explain Benny Hill to me?