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Hitchhiker's Guide Reviewed
me at werk writes "The Register has posted it's review of h2g2. 'The radio series, that became a book, that became a TV series, has finally made it to the silver screen. The film version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is faithful to author Douglas Adams' legacy. The trouble is it's simply not especially funny.'"
I watched it, it was pretty funny. But then I watched it by myself, and I remember laughing so hard to the show on radio and smiling after reading the boook. But I did not laugh as much.
Don't know why...
Well I don't think they do. It's got so much crap to carry round to live up to that you just can't begin to know if you'll like it.
I hope to see it this weekend and, as long as it's about as good as the TV version (which I wasn't a fan of), I'll be happy I guess.
Of course, if it's slapstick city I may have real trouble taking it and will feel cheated of my tenner!
One of the main things I enjoy about Douglas Adams works is the humor
To be faithfull to his legacy i would say that you need to capture the "Funny" parts aswell as the other aspects , and the humor is pretty much one of the main aspects .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
This has the potential to be either one of the best, or one of the most disappointing movies of the year. I am trying not to hope too much for the former, and keep my expectations low. Too often lately it seems that low expectations are the key to good movies.
over at rotten tomatoes
Currently 62% positive
Pretty sure I enjoyed it more because of the books. The Register had it right about plot development: you'll need to have read the books to make sense of some parts - like the dolphins - but otherwise it's a pretty funny film.
I love the sound effect tie-ins too, watch for the bread knife and it's upcoming George Lucas prequel.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
the problem i think is so many people have read the book and have their own idea of how things will look, everyones will be different, which is why it's so hard to please everyone when you adapt a popular book to tv/movie
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I really don't like the new Marvin , he looks kind of Mangaled(sorry for the pun) , and dosn't look entierly crap as he did in the TV-show which really added to the charichter.. Actualy come ot think of it , most of the new costumes are rather odd and make the charichters look like Jedi knightsw w.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/gallery_photos/hitchhike rs_cast_gal.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.scifi.com/sci fiwire2005/index.php%3Fcategory%3D10%26id%3D122&h= 250&w=380&sz=22&tbnid=Wyl4kgno2gMJ:&tbnh=78&tbnw=1 19&hl=en&start=3&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmarvin%2Bhitch hikers%2B%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://w
for example
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
First off, I was there with towel on shoulder...
Watching the previews, Marvin was my biggest concern. That concern ended up not panning out,,, he fit in pretty well. I'd say just put aside your preconceptions and go watch a movie. There are enough of the little things added that only a Hitchiker's afficiondo would appreciate to make it worth your time. Just don't get stuck up in the "Well, they did it different in the book" trap. This is alot easier to do if you realize that Douglas Adams never intended for previous works to be Canon. He's just telling a story. It has to be altered a bit here and there to allow for different mediums, so while some of the old gems are lost, new things show up.
Synopsis sans spoiler: while I didn't bust a gut laughing, I did laugh out loud in the theatre. That's alot more than I can say for just about any other "comedy" I've seen in a while.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I've read the books, and I watched it with someone who has memorized most of the jokes, and we both enjoyed it. It's different, and if you want to see the books (the first one, in this case) translated exactly to film, you'll be disappointed. The movie exists as its own entity, just like the radio show and the TV show and everything else. The British humor is extremely toned down, but it's still pretty funny. That poor whale...
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Didn't Adams himself help write the screenplay? He's credited.
--
The Marines: The few, the proud, the not very bright. - Slashdot tagline 04/21/05
The early eighties TV version is a great three-and-a-half hour videotape, the radio version is a great nine hours ... soon to be thirteen hours. The books are a great couple of weeks. The old DC comics version was apt. And the movie is a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. Having experienced the other versions, the new film was a welcome addition to the Douglas Adams canon, in my opinion. I loved the new episode with regards to the Church of the Arkelseisure, because that Perspective Gun was a wonderful literary tool which allowed screenwriter Douglas Adams to have his characters learn things which they otherwise would have learned through bulky dialogue. As for dialogue, the movie had a good mix of "novel dialogue" and "movie dialogue". "Novel dialogue" is bulky, wheras "movie dialogue" is short and to the point, and the film had a good mix indeed.
I've enjoyed the other versions, and so I found it very simple to enjoy the new version.
They must make four sequels.
P.S. Bring a pair of "red and blue" 3D glasses. As the starship Heart of Gold arrives at the planet Magrathea, the crew is greeted by a holographic recording. That recording is only a minute long; however, it's in 3D. You need a pair of "red and blue" 3D glasses in order to properly enjoy that minute of film. This is not a spoiler; it's an enhancer.
"I am a fictional character."
Personal favourite bits: seeing the original Marvin in the queue on Vogsphere, as well as the cameo played by Simon Jones (the original Arthur). And the gun, don't forget the gun.
"I am Heisenborg. You will probably be assimilated"
Under NO circumstances can you compaire this to Battlefield earth. You were either smoking, drinking, or just went in with your judgement already made. While I will admit it wasn't as funny as it COULD have been, saying it's like BFE is like saying Linux is like Windows.
People with good memories for the book might find the movie funny because their minds fill in the missing dialogue. But as Ebert says, to someone who doesn't already know the book, its not funny.
Whats interesting is that the movie does have some of the funniest scenes from the book, but those scenes just don't work. Partly because the persectives are different. Being inside the head of a newly born whale as it plummets to earth is funny, but watching a graphic of it hit the ground isn't funny.
Other things were just poorly done, for example, the babble fish. They actually do cut to the Guide to explain what a babblefish does, but totally skip the part about God disappearing in a puff of logic. So the scene is not funny at all save maybe a little slapstick about putting a fish in Authur's ear.
Sadly, this movie is exactly what you expect from Hollywood doing a foriegn movie, dumbed down to the point of irrelevance.
And to be honest its not to bad at all. Yes some of the British comedy tone was toned down, but it was still rather funny. It managed to get a good couple of belly laughs from the audiance, including me.
:P). The extended usage of the vogons was quite amusing and they made great bad guys. There are some bits that will make the geek in you go "ooh ooh ooh!" and point excitedly although I wont go into detail as to spoil it.
Good points, marvin was spectacular and outdid the original TV series' version. Zaphod Beeblebrox was outstanding and the true extent of his ego bleeds off the screen (flamebait comment, to be honest I think only an American could pull off the cheesy grin and un-abashed ego... sorry
Bad points are I'm a bit hmmmm about Ford, Trillian and Arthur though. Ford really didnt create any sort of major screen prescence and as such became a rather minor character with a penchant for towels. Trillian, whilst great at the start of the film, seamed to get relegeted to damsel in distress/love interest (standard hollywood crap). And Arthur... well hes was quite good for most of the film but I suppose I miss the orginal TV version which sticks in my mind as the definative Arthur Dent.
I suppose the worst aspect of the film is that yes, some of the great witty dialogue is missing. Its not all gone but a lot of the classic lines are trimmed. I quite missed the original lines regarding the babel fish proveing that god did not exist and the very funny bit about the plans being on display (the shortend "I had to go downstairs", made no sense on screen).
In all I would recommend people go see it, it gets a bit shakey before the middle but still provides a good homage to Adams' legacy.
I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe. -- Arthur Dent.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I saw the movie this afternoon, and I can't understand your mindset. The mindset of anyone who'd post a negative review puzzles me. I've seen, heard, and read, the other versions of H2G2, and this new film was legitimately the best non-novel draft of that story. They MUST make sequels galore.
"I am a fictional character."
The major problem I had with the movie is that it adds angst and sentimentality to the plot. Note, this is very stereotypical *Hollywood* angst and sentimentality and you can practically predict the lines so it's not particularly good angst and sentimentality either. Note I am a girl and I devour trashy romance novels and love chick flicks. However, there are situations where putting this sort of stuff in just simply doesn't really work (esp. when it is so badly written). Basically you sit through the movie. Funny scene. Laugh. Angst, romance, talking (all badly done) get bored. Funny scene - laugh. Angst, romance, talking - bored. Oh let me predict what lines they are going to say next. Wow, I got it right. How amazing (sarcasm). Funny scene - laugh. Etc. etc. Though I suspect the funny scenes were funny because I already read the book as they do seem to cut a lot of stuff out...
:)
The other problem is Ford Prefect, Mr. Sarcasm in the originals is practically a non-entity and not especially funny when he does exist.
I loved Zaphod though
Spoiler alert... I guess.
Why does it seem like I'm the only one that thought the playing up of Arthur and Trillian's romance was ridiculous? Why does Trillian have an American accent? Why... why... why...
Yes, I probably sound like just another rabid Adams fanboy who expected the movie to be a direct copy of the book. That isn't the case. I thought the film was awful. The acting was not very good, some of the revised dialog was really awkward, and... many other things simply related to the filmmaking itself and not just the script. My girlfriend and I were incredibly tempted to walk out many times, especially when Arthur made his incredibly awkward (I cannot use that word enough... that is my official review of the whole film... AWKWARD...) attempt at a sweet soliloquy at Trillian while about to have his brain removed by mice...
I think I'm just incredibly sore at the fact that they even attempted to make the film accessible to the general public. Am I being elitist? Probably... I mean, I can see the value in attempting to bring Adams' work to a broader venue, but when they cannot be done justice, some things are probably left unsaid. Or un-filmed in this case.
The film attempts to "have it's cake and eat it too" (to indulge in a trite cliche); make broad swaths of generic American love-story candy-coated filmmaking and sneak in the funny dialogue and faithful-to-the-series bits when the "normals" in the audience are distracted by something shiny. The hardcore fans will deride it for its creative license, and the great unwashed will view it as a quirky little film that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to them and is only "kinda" funny.
After getting in my car afterward and popping in Radiohead's "OK Computer", especially "Subterranean Homesick Alien", all I could think of were the smiling faces of the proleteriat in the audience, laughing their heads off every time Ford, Zaphod or Arthur were hit in the face with while walking on Vogsphere. The same scene that made me groan loudly. I wondered quietly as I took occasional peeks at the moon while driving: am I right on the money about this, or am I completely wrong? If the latter is true, then perhaps, like Ford, I've been trapped on this planet for far too long.
*sigh*... tommorrow's another day, I suppose...
I saw it 46 hours ago (I missed the opportunity to say 42 hours) and I must admit I have never read the book, only heard my son relating the highlights as he read it. It seems to me that the film mainly serves to remind you of the funny bits you read in the book rather than being amusing in itself. If you read and like the book then the film will probably be ok, but if you go and see the film cold like me then you might just be glancing at your watch and waiting till you can get back home and read /.
If you're a fan of the TV version of Marvin, watch the queueing scene carefully. I saw the film last night and thought the new Marvin was really good. You can't see it in the stills but his movement and posture fits his personality perfectly. The film is quite different from the radio/TV/book versions, but the bits that have changed work well.
Decode these
Agreed. The magic of this story was always in the dialogue... using great special effects to add a sense of wonder (like the Magrathean construction floor) doesn't do much for the story. Looks cool... but zooming by planets just makes the audience go "oooh" and "ahhh" and that time should have been spent making them laugh their butts off.
its as if you have no awareness whatsoever of this concept called 'a generation'.
.. if they liked the movie enough, they feel compelled to read the book.
believe it or not, but there are some people who did not grow up reading books. there are a generation or two, or three, of people who do not read books.
these people go to movies.
should the story be inaccessible to them?
making a movie about a book, might prompt people to read the book. believe it or not, but this does actually happen. people see movies, they hear that it was based on a book, and then
translating one form of literary culture into another form, is usually a good way to spread that culture. don't you agree?
oh, wait. you're one of those self-ism types, for whom the idealization of the self is all there is. your self, having read the book, can't possibly think of why there is any reason whatsoever to contribute to another cultural form.
next time you see a 9 year old, ask them if they know the answer to life, the universe, and everything.. you might get a kick out of the answer.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
So we're letting all the people who don't like to think very hard while enjoying a good book or radio program, ruin the film version of a story we all love? Why do we want people like that to see the movie anyway... they *still* won't like it if it's dumbed down for them... all that does is ruin the movie for everyone.
This movie should have been made for FANS only.
So does the movie actually lessen your enjoyment? Did Garth Jennings, or whoever it was who directed it, somehow go back in time and steal your delight in the original books? Geez -- if it's not as good as the books - and I don't see how it could be - then it's not as good as the books. It's not going to make me throw away my copy, or decide that I didn't actually like it after all.
Stay and watch the credits - about 3 or 4 minutes into them there are some bonus scenes from the guide!
I'll go even further. If you have any idea what the thing your aunt gave you that you don't know what it is" is, then you'll know that Douglas Adams intended each version of things to be different from the others. He even went so far as to say that he was upset how similar (and therefore boring to the fans) the miniseries was to the books, and it was only that way because he didn't have as much creative control as he would have liked.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Although I've been a techie my whole life, i was raised by religiously fanatical parents, so none of this talk of space exploration and evolution would be tolerated in our home. So that excluded enjoying HGG on the radio, television, or bookshelf.
I bring this up because it seems most everyone else here has gotten intimate with HGG in some form or another, so I thought I would provide some insight into the reaction of someone who saw the movie with no previous knowledge of what this thing was all about.
I was so eager to see HGG, I got to the theatre 45 minutes early last night to ensure good seating. I will say it simplye: the movie did NOT disappoint. Funny? Absolutely! There is a lot of silly humor, mainly in the forms of irony and cynicism. Many, many times throughout the movie, the entire theatre was laughing out loud together. I'm not sure who all in the theatre was familiar with the HGG story, everyone there from the 8-year-old kid to the 80-year-old grandparent gave it a unanimous thumbs up. I am actually thinking of going to see this thing again today, it was such a joy to watch the first time! I also just picked the literature from half.com.
believe it or not, but there are some people who did not grow up reading books.
As there has always been.
there are a generation or two, or three, of people who do not read books.
No. If anything, books seem to be on a rebound. Twenty years ago outside of big cities the only bookstore one would likely find would be a Waldenbooks mostly selling Garfield comics. Now you can hardly throw a stone and not hit a Borders or a Barnes and Noble. And they really sell some stuff for literati -- stuff like the Loeb and I Tatti Libraries can actually be found in the sticks these days. And of course there's the bookseller Amazon.com. practically the only dot-com that didn't go belly up...
Yes, actually. A movie can spoil a book you've previously read. A movie presents powerful images that are difficult to un-see. If I re-read Hitchhiker's and I find that I'm hearing Douglas Adams' writing in Stephen Fry's voice, then that is definitely a negative. Worst voice of guide, ever (mainly if you're British).
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Never one to miss an opertunity for a pun..
This is what i get being home-sick a large ammount of TaypOs,
Dee'ing things i DONt normaly do , Goodness there are alot i can work into one paragraph .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy
HHGG -> H2G2
there are a generation or two, or three, of people who do not read books. these people go to movies. should the story be inaccessible to them?
b reath
funny as the book.
Put simply - Yes. Fuck 'em. If they won't take the time to pick up a book and read the story, why should they have access to it?
And I don't mean this as a troll... The biggest complaint I see in this thread involves how poorly DA's British, intellectual, subtle style of humor, translates to the big screen. This very consistently happens with productions of decent literature (as opposed to productions of hacks who basically write screenplays in novel form), because the two mediums do NOT have totally equivalent expressive power.
translating one form of literary culture into another form, is usually a good way to spread that culture. don't you agree?
No, I do not.
Movies convey information as though the viewer exists as a disembodied viewer floating through the story, observing the events that unfold. Great for action, great for "physical" comedy, great for slasher flicks and some forms of more physical horror, great for porn. Okay for drama, barely passable for "psychological" thrillers (only by making offensively frequent use of information the viewer should not fairly have, such as showing scenes of the unidentifiable bad guy torturing the little girl, when the other 99% of the movie has the observer follow Detective BadAss).
Books, OTOH, make use of the reader's imagination. They let you inside the heads of the charaters without the need for annoying voiceovers - For that matter, a book could get away with not having a single spoken word (referring only to fiction here, of course, since nonfiction would make this a moot point).
your self, having read the book, can't possibly think of why there is any reason whatsoever to contribute to another cultural form.
Hello? Come back down here, friend, you've floated a bit too far out there.
This doesn't involve cultural anthropology, it involves two mediums that most people in the modern Western world have basically equal access to (or if not, they do not by choice). Both mediums have their uses. But both do not work for every story.
In this case, the moving-pictures-with-sound format doesn't work well to fully express the story. I would even say that about the original BBC episodes - Not bad, but not nearly as stop-reading-so-I-can-stop-laughing-and-catch-my-
next time you see a 9 year old, ask them if they know the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
And after going to see this movie, they might "know" the right answer, but they won't "get" why so many of us "geeks who read" find that answer hilarious. That 9YO will roll his or her eyes, and say "what-EVER" in that dismissive tone that only 5-15YOs seem able to master.
This has nothing to do with elitism, or with some noble idea of "making culture accessible". It involves placing something in the wrong context. The crocodile doesn't live in trees, the monkey doesn't live in the desert, and the cat doesn't live in a swamp. "format C:\" doesn't work in Linux. And HHG doesn't work on film.
I had heard a lot of bad stuff about this movie, so when I went to see it, I had somewhat low expectations, and they were very much surpassed.
I don't know how many times this has happened to me. People that love the book/comic book/whatever that a movie is based on slam the movie so much that I start to believe them a little. If I do end up going to see it, I usually end up loving it. But if a movie is hyped and hyped and hyped (I'm talking grassroots hyping here... I've pretty much learned to ignore advertising) when I go to see it I'm usually underwhelmed.
And if I go to a movie that I had heard absolutely nothing about besides "it's kinda funny, actually" or something I often end up entranced. Even if the movie isn't all that good. So I've learned to A)go on opening night B)watch a lot more "art house" style movies (except the ones trumped as "a magestic triumph of the human spirit" or something. Those are just plain boring to me. Or finally C)watch a B or C rated "horror" flick for the sheer mind-numbing entertainment.
Not hanging around movie sites when I want to see a movie helps me enjoy movies much more. So does (Uh oh... have I just become that guy?) not really watching TV on a regular basis.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Of course, if it's slapstick city I may have real trouble
;-)
It's SlapStick Planet, actually, and literally so!
Just a thought...ooow!
You can't take the sky from me...
I couldn't tell by your post whether you verified that part was in 3D or not. I just saw the movie last night as well and planned on bringing 3D glasses along just to test that part out. Being a 3D aficionado I suspected the hologram was because of the obvious blue and red outlines (Nice to see Simon Jones made it to the big screen (that's the TV series 'Arthur Dent' for those not steeped in HG2G lore). Would be cool if it really was in 3D. Adds to the cheese. :)
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
What the hell was with John Malkovich? Why was that scene there at all? It did nothing to advance the plot and was not in the book that I remember reading.
He was a Jatravartid. The narrator pretty much read the first chapter of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe including the whole "in the beginning the Universe was created" bit. (I thought the Ah-choo; Bless You line was hilarious.) They obviously wanted to draw on that background matierial to create a new location and background to create an alternate plot. (Every version of H2G2 has a slightly different plot.) Of course you don't know that the whole gun thing does come into the plot in a very funny moment involving Marvin, but you wouldn't know that because you walked out of the #$@!%@ movie.
I've heard stories about people walking out of movies. I really have to question their ability to enjoy life.
I walked out halfway through. [...] I rated this on IMDB and actually gave it a 1.
What are you, a Vogon?
You DO NOT RATE SOMETHING YOU HAVE NOT ACTUALLY SEEN!
Sheesh.
And BTW, there is a wonderfully hilarious moment near the end that had the Douglas Adams feel to it to an incredible degree, and you MISSED it! Don't call yourself a fan: you aren't. You're a curmudgeon, and you need to take a drink, relax, and be less callous and bad tempered.
You can't take the sky from me...
Meh. There are a lot of funny movies out there. "Office Space" probably being the funniest of the last ten years of so.
If you are going to make a movie called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", you damn well better at least capture the spirit of the original work.
It would have been nice if the movie could have slowed down to explain why a space traveller should keep his towel handy, rather then just make it seem like a strange fettish of Ford's, and later justify its presence by using it as a sort of weapon.
(IIRC, the point of keeping a towel handy, among other things, is that it creates the impression that it makes it easier to borrow things like soap or a comb, because if you travel with a towel, you are obviously the sort of person who takes care of himself, but simply finds himself short a personal hygiene item or two.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.