bring your towel – Adrian Taverner

First let me say the obvious – the movie is never as good as the book unless you’re talking about the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or at least that’s been my experience. Well… I’ll qualify that to say that where the book has gone first the movie is never as good except for the Lord of the… ok shut up and quit giving me a hard time. I’m trying to set up a post here.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, from our beloved Douglas Adams, unfortunately sides with the vast majority.

Most reviews go something like this. We acknowledge that the movie is well made, visually exciting, and quite entertaining. But it’s not The Book.

Before you go all Marvin on me I’m not saying you should give it a miss. It really is a movie worth seeing. A lot of the brilliant verbal gags are missing, but that’s what you get when a radio script grows up into a movie twenty-five years later. And this is why the movie falls short. Sacrifices are made by the handfull to make a movie that will appeal to wide summer audiences who expect a fairly lightweight visual carnival ride.

But if you can focus on what’s there rather than what isn’t you’ll really enjoy the movie. Old school fans will notice cameos from the orginal tv series Marvin and Arthur (Simon Jones). It’s nice to have an actual plot, too, even if they had to tack on second and third acts to make it happen. The ending is still a little trite but considering the characters aren’t especially robust you couldn’t expect much more. It’s a movie about a story about The Book.

If you haven’t read The Book this is your perfect introduction. Finally you will know what people are talking about when they describe their favourite drink as getting smacked in the head by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Of course the movie won’t help you escape the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. That didn’t make the cut, even though both towels and Beast are in the movie.

If you are a fan of The Book and the reviews from other fans are scaring you off the movie you should still give it a fair shot. It is visually very well done with amazing attention to detail especially in Magrathea. Sam Rockwell steals the show as an appropriately over the top Zaphod Beeblebrox. Alan Rickman is the right guy for Marvin’s voice but I thought he underplayed the role. The creatures (especially the Vogons) are a marvelous production from the Jim Henson Creature Shop.

This dj rates The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the movie) a 7/10 (the book being a 9.9), low because the characters are flat, but high because the attention to detail is fun to watch. I declare it a qualified success.

Dreadmouse

May 4, 2005 at 5:05 am

I come in with about a 7 as well. I went to the theatre well-encumbered with having read the series about a dozen times, Brit humour being my personal cure for the blues. So I may have been expecting too much.

Still, it was okay. Not as good as I’d hoped but not nearly as bad as I feared, if that makes any sense at all.

As the DJ says, don’t go to this movie expecting a faithful retelling of Hitchhikers. This is an “inpired by” movie. Members of our group who hadn’t read the books found the movie to be good fun.

COMMENT:
Perhaps I should start off by thanking the reviewers that damned this movie to hell. You lowered my expectations and in fact I found the movie entertaining, enough like the book that I didn’t feel ripped off and considering the years its been since I read the book, quite easy to follow.

I’m also quite thankful that they managed to feed me enough raw data and let me decide whether it was funny instead of ramming-it-down-my-throat-explaining-the-punchline hollywood stylee.

toki

May 5, 2005 at 6:05 am

at least you didn’t go with a group of people who hadn’t bothered to read the book, one of whom asked very loudly “What’s with the Towel?” thereby earning the hostile glares of nearly everyone in the theatre.