film: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[ozbreaker]

I think it should have been called "4 weddings and a guide to the galaxy" or "The Guide Actually!"


It was umm a very poor to woeful imitation of the series. I think the director was restrained by not wanting to copy the series whilst giving it the same look and feel as well so it makes it harder.

My issues were:

• Arthur Dent was for too competent. He's Arthur Dent. Arthur Phillip Dent that spends the entire series in quest for a nice cup of tea and spends most of his time saying stupid things along the lines of "So this is it, we're going to die".
• Zaphod looked and acted like a stupid idiot rather than the ubber-cool frude(sp?) that we've come to expect.
• Ford was impotent as a character - not enough worldliness.
• The plot line lost it with the love story.
• The vogons were weak - not as officious and pointless as they are in the book by far.
• Too much was trying to be crammed into a short movie - which is probably a large part of the problem. Not enough time to properly develop ideas and the asides of pointless facts which is the whole point of the book.

on the plus side:

• The public service portrayal was excellent in that whole 'funny cos it's true way'
• The marvins voice was perfect - i forget his name now but the surliness he brought forth in dogma was perfect for this role.
• I liked the look and feel they adopted for the movie - giving it a similarish tinge to the original series.
• The mushrooms that were created on the new earth looked familiar
• Making loud smart arsed comments about he govt anti-drug scare campaign that was screened just before.
• Having the "Zaphod's just this guy you know" line in the movie

So i came out of it not completely hating it as i understood there is way too much to cram into a movie and also why they put the love bit in, so it was a meh i won't rush out to watch it again but it wasn't a total waste of space. I wanted to watch the original tv series instead.

 

[0rb]

i was sorta disappointed, not sure why.

guess if i hadn't read the books (many times over) i would've liked it more... i think i liked the scenes specifically written for the film most... everything else seemed very anti-climactic... i just couldn't lose myself in it.

with the LotR trilogy i managed to do this... i'm guessing that because it's dramatic rather than comedy it was easier... but then again, how on earth (sic) could one possibly incorporate the flavour of lines like:

• "Arthur yawed wildly as his skin tried to jump one way and his skeleton the other, whilst his brain tried to work out which of his ears it most wanted to crawl out of."*

or (my fave)

• "He (Zaphod) poured a drink down his other throat with the plan that it would head the previous one off at the pass, join forces with it, and together they would get the second to pull itself together. Then all three would go off in search of the first, give it a good talking to and maybe a bit of a sing as well.
  
  He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that, so he sent down a fifth to explain the plan more fully and a sixth for moral support."*

not a bad film tho... i'll probably try and watch it again sometime... feel like i didn't really give it a fair chance.

• * both quotes from Life, The Universe and Everything, but his writing style in the first three books was very similar.

 

[FestiveCheez]

I thought it was weird how they played up the Arthur-Trillian love story, which DID NOT EXIST in the book. The film was entertaining overall, and I certainly laughed through most of it. And I really liked the opening theme song: a showbizzy ditty called "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish." I can just imagine Wayne Newton singing that in Vegas someday. :D

 

[DarthMom]

God I love that opening song.

I think it is a great kids movie, but a little devoid of enough content to have kept me intently interested. wouldn't have enjoyed watching in a theater, wanted to do other things while it was on.

 

[alasdairm]

bump

alasdair

 

[doofqueen]

I liked it. I only read the books a year before it came out and its the only sci fi i have read. But its more just a satirical look at society based in outer space hehe

I thought it was very close to the book and not filled and chopped with hollywood bullshit like most books to movie movies....

 

[glitterbizkit]

I love the books, but I didn't even finish the film, it just wasn't my cup of tea...

 

[Mildly Eccentric]

I loved the first three books, but the Adams seemed to lose his touch in the forth one. The fifth one, written by someone else, was just nonsense. The movie was really good, considering what they had to work with. Hitchhiker's must've been a tough book to put to script.

 

[panic_the_digital]

This movie blew, and I am a huge fan of his books (the first three at least). My advice for the unititated is to pretend that the movie never happened and to just enjoy the books.