There is no point being faithful to a book written far in the past if you want to make money from the film, as the cultural bridge would just be too huge.
Nevertheless, I think this film does a good job of adapting the story for a late 20thC audience. Perhaps its biggest achievement is that you don't think "Bond" at all, once you move beyond the opening fight scene.
The notion that a year at sea will make everything okay, in a country notorious for nurturing grievances over centuries, stretches credibility, but one can understand he's loth to be parted any longer than that from his great love. By the same token, the idea that she would've waited over 6 years for him to come back to her, in an age when a woman's only hope of preserving/improving her standard of living was to obtain a good marriage, beggars belief, but is nicely romantic, amid the immediacy of our present times (cf. the ending of Cast Away).
"Swiss Family Robinson" is more fun as an adventure story, while "Cast Away" handles the logistical and emotional challenges of being alone on a Pacific island superbly. Robinson Crusoe's strength is in bridging the cultural divide between a Christian European and a cannibalistic islander at a time when the former considered themselves so superior to the latter that slavery was considered normal practice - showing the common bond between humans that transcends all the superficial differences of gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, etc that so easily divide us.
So there is plenty of food for thought here, but it can also be enjoyed as a simple adventure story.
Review of Robinson Crusoe
