While I think various people have commented by now on the (numerous) ways that the movie and the book approach the subject material differently (to be diplomatic), I have a slightly more general topic I'd like to discuss. We were asked to consider if the movie could in fact be a parody of the book in some way, and there's certainly evidence to that effect. However, after skimming Wikipedia and IMDB (research purists commence eye-rolling), I noticed that the director explicitly stated on the DVD commentary that he never finished the book after the first few chapters, becoming "bored and depressed." While that doesn't single-handedly deny the possibility that some awareness of the book was brought to the film-making, it certainly doesn't support the idea of the film as parody.
But, as I was thinking about it, I started to think more generally about what would constitute a "science fiction parody" and it seemed surprisingly hard to pin down--the only thing that came to mind at all was Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide. While both styles/genres have some external construction of a fictional setting meant to help demonstrate some underlying truth of our own reality, the two seem quite opposed in terms of methodology. While any specific definition will inevitably draw counter-examples and nitpicking, I think it's safe to say that science fiction requires of its authors a commitment to a rational explanation for the world they create; in fact, those explanatory threads that link back to our own understanding end up being the way that we can identify with a world so distinct from our own. On the other hand, parodies seem to have some amount of absurdity or irony--their purpose is actually to attack the rational reality of another work. It seems like it would be quite challenging to somehow make a parodic science fiction setting because you would have to simultaneously be expressing rationality and absurdity, and the reader would be left with detailed laws, histories, and science that somehow create a world that is entirely metaphorical or symbolic.
While I freely acknowledge that posts at 1 A.M. may not be the most lucid (and I think I may have started overlapping parody with satire in my head), I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this.