The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

[Larry Mahnken]

Since the reviews I'd read beforehand lowered my expectations of the film, I wasn't disappointed. In fact, I thought it was a good movie. I'll see it several times, and buy the DVD. It'll probably be a moderate box office success, and they'll make The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe.

But I wouldn't categorize it as "awesome". It could have been awesome, and certainly could have been better than it was. The first part of the movie, pretty much up until they get picked up by the Heart of Gold, is a flop for me. The story stayed pretty much the same, but they cut back on a lot of the dialogue to save time (and set up the Trillian love story). That's fine, but rather than replacing the dialogue with shorter jokes, they just cut up the existing dialogue and often left out the funny bits.

Good example is the conversation with Mr. Prosser.

Mr. Prosser said, "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know."
"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no, he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me."
"But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

Instead, in the movie, Prosser tells him the plans were on display, Arthur says they were in the cellar, and Prosser says, "Yes, well you found them, didn't you?"

This not only is less funny, but more importantly, it fails to drive the point home on how truly difficult it was to see the plans, and to set up the irony of the Vogons saying that the plans for Earth's destruction were "only 50 light years away". Much of the first part of the movie was like this, it did more to remind me of how funny the book was than make me laugh.

There were two ways to not make this error. The first is to leave the dialogue mostly intact, which does sound fanboyish, but there really is no reason why you can't do that. The other is to replace the dialogue with new, shorter dialogue that is funny and gets the point home.

Anyway, once the movie moved away from where the books, radio show and TV show had gone it got better, because it was by necessity original. The plot elements they changed didn't hurt the film much, if at all (though some of them do make things tricky for making faithful sequels, and necessitate changing some of Adams' ideas without his consent, obviously).

I think Mos Def was excellent at playing the character that was written. I don't think the character that was written was anything like the other versions of Ford Prefect, but if it had been written like the other versions, he would have pulled it off. Sam Rockwell tried too hard to be Dubya as Zaphod, when Zaphod is actually cool, not stupid. Zooey Deschanel was good as Trillian, Rickman was good as Marvin, and Freeman was excellent as Arthur, though I do wish he had said "So this is it, we're going to die" a few more times.

I think the production team did a good job. The two girls sitting behind me who were entirely new to the story thought it was brilliant, and after I told them that the books were better and some of the things that were in the books that really couldn't come across on screen they said they were going to go right out and read them. I then took them both home and had my way with them. Okay, I made that last part up.

I recommend that everyone see it, and that you stay for the whole thing. It gets better as it goes along, and I enjoyed the last act very much.

[Mysticales]

I only played the C64 text based game..
"What about earth?" when you layed down on the street..

So really... gotta see the movie to see how it follows what I rem..

[Larry Mahnken]

[quote="Mysticales";p="489004"]I only played the C64 text based game..
"What about earth?" when you layed down on the street..

So really... gotta see the movie to see how it follows what I rem..[/quote]

You know they have that game available online, right?

[Kovac]

Well I just saw the movie today, I went in with my mind as open as possible doing my best to ignore what everyone had said about the movie (Good or bad) and to remember that this wasnt supposed to be a recreation of any of the previous incarnations. Instead that it was a version with it's own humor, essentially the same tale but told in a way that works best for film.

There was stuff that I liked about the movie.
I rather liked the visuals, the dolphins song wasnt half bad and the casting on the whole was rather good.
I thought the book was very good, but then it was pretty much verbatim with the originals.
But in the end I felt rather let down.
A lot of the humor didnt work, some did, but most didnt.
In fact during the course of the movie there was only a few times that the audience I was with actually laughed.

It was like there were all these 'nods' to fans, but not cool PJ nods like putting Bilbo's trolls in the background; nods as if to say, 'Yes, we do realise there was a cool moment here; we cut it, sorry, but we'll tantalise you with the shredded remnants just to make you go ACK'.

As for the jokes being straight foward... i'm not sure if humor is best when it is straight foward. That just makes for a very bland joke imo.

I have spoken to people at both end of the fan spectrum (Fans and people who had not taken in any of the HHGTTG versions)
And it wasnt generally liked.

And a big to you Greg for your insulting strip

But then again, go see it
Make up your own mind

[elenaran]

I liked the movie - thought it was really funny, but why does Hollywood feel it necessary for every movie in existence to have a romantic plot?

For the most part, Greg, I'd have to agree with you that the changes were in the spirit of the book, but not the romance stuff. Douglas Adams didn't write a romantic comedy (which the movie turned out to be).

As with Lord of the Rings, the Aragorn-Arwen/Arthur-Trillian stuff could've been left out and then there would've been even more space for great stuff from the book.

[SevTiZ]

which brings up this point: After the "success" of Elf, is Zooey Deschanel requesting a shower scene in all her movies now?

But I do agree with Larry Mahnken, in that the story in the movie is going to make it an interesting challenge to make the sequels. Then again, Arthur CAN have two movies to sort things out with Trillian and go back to Earth v 2.0 so that he can learn to fly with Fenchurch. DAMN them for putting the dolphins back, though.

[Mae Dean]

Even the enhanced relationship between Arthur and Trillian (in which people seem to have detected the hand of the Studio) was something that Douglas was working on as well. .... Douglas was always up for reinventing HHGG in each of its different incarnations and he knew that working harder on some character development and some of the key relationships was an integral part of turning HHGG into a movie.

Ahem.

Also, if they end up making more movies, it's almost GUARANTEED they won't make any past the third book. The fourth and fifth were way too weird for film.

[gravity]

If Hollywood is making End of Eva and Aeon Flux into live action movies, I don't think they'll be out weirded by the fourth and fifth books of the trilogy.

[Mae Dean]

This is true. And the fifth book IS more cinematic than the rest, really... what with the "evil" guide and all that.

[StruckingFuggle]

I'm curious why, because Addams was for "changing the books", why does that make every change smiled upon by his ghost?

[gravity]

Because some changes might suck monkey balls.

I mean, if they developed some weird plot thing where Frod Prefect and Marvin had an illicit love affair, it would probably not be smiled upon by DA's ghost.

But I'm open to seeing what they will do in the future.

[Mae Dean]

Not every change is necessarily smiled upon, but in case you missed what I said above, HE MADE THEM HIMSELF.

I'm going to go blue in the face shouting this, i just know it.

[Banditrests]

Yes, Douglas Adams wrote the screen play in 1982 when they were going to do the movie the first time. So really it couldn't be more in the spirt of the book really, since (as Greg said) HE MADE IT HIMSELF.

[StruckingFuggle]

Huh, I had read that whoever co-wrote it wasn't owning up to what work she did compared to Douglas, especially after his death.

Ah well.

[applekidjosh]

I understand why they made the arthur x trillian thing happen. I'm just sad. Fenchurch is so awesome.