Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Movie....

Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox

i totally agree. the casting is good, but i'm still not convinced it is appropriate for HG...

Probably one day only.

i've come to loathe the DYSisms of trailers lately (that end bit was rubbish), but i'm still sort of looking forward to seeing this - this is the first i've seen anything of it...but why no scene with 'Marvin' talking?

Heh slight x-post with Kyle! Variation is a good thing -- it's just a pity that this will be the first version without DNA himself around. :-(

Looks a bit like Sam Rockwell as Gary Oldman playing Zaphod Beeblebrox.

I dunno. From that trailer it looks like they really aren't going to capture the humor...

That rake slapping scene is hilarious, even if was already done to perfect effect on the Simpsons

I'm quite excited for this now...

Vogon poetry (Arthur and Ford strapped down, Vogon leaning over them)

Deep Thought (the big crowd scene with the gold thing in the distance -- at one point you see someone with one of those sports-events foam hands but the slogan on the hand is "Think Deep.")

Magrathea factory floor (Arthur and Slartibartfast moving down a tunnel into a vast space)

...and various other familiar bits. Slightly more unfamiliar:

Marvin walking through laser fire on a green lawn with a picket fence (back at Arthur's house?)

Zaphod doing some sort of rock and roll singer moves bathed in green light (Heart of Gold launch? Disaster Area?)

Heart of Gold's shuttle moving through a huge cityscape somewhere.

Etc. etc.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the music exchange with Zaphod and Marvin on the Magrathea surface is left in - Zaphod babbles about going where "no one has gone these 3000 years" and Marvin starts humming "Also Sprach Zarathustra."

"Aw can it Marvin"

(though in the original radio broadcast, Marvin initially hums "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and Arthur explains "has anyone noticed that Marvin is humming Pink Floyd?")

Agreed! As was said up a bit, change and difference will mean a new experience rather than simply going redux.

I was always annoyed they could never keep in the Pink Floyd part in the official release of the radio show, bah! Arthur follows up by asking if Marvin knows anything else, Marvin says plaintively, "Rock and roll?" And a really tinny version of the Beatles' "Rock and Roll Music" kicks in.

Seeing more of the design of Marvin, I think the look is perfect. Those downbeat eyes!

new trailer up (I think, I didn't get to watch the one above)

looks GREAT. Marvin RULES (and I can't even listen to the sound here at work).

2005 already looks like a much better year for films that 2004 (though that is like saying cilantro is a much better seasoning for guacamole than ground-up gorilla shit)

The film won't make it that far, will it?

If it's a success all around, I'm extremely NON-dubious!

Keep in mind that much of the whole cycle was first constructed as drama -- radio drama perhaps, but still dramatic. In some ways that makes the transition from book to film (if they want to stick to that route) pretty easy to do since the Adams model is fairly lean for each book, even the last two full ones that were written as books straight up without a fallback series (Life, the Universe and Everything was originally written as a Dr. Who script).

haha!

http://www.btinternet.com/~michaelkelly8/04.jpg

Which would sound like a positive review, but unfortunately that phrase also brings to mind Dude, Where's My Car?

The dialogue between Arthur and Prosser, which was written for a sketch in a Cambridge Footlights revue in October 1973, is a terrific example of Douglas' clever way with - and love of - language:

"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the Display Department."
"With a torch."
"The lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But you found the plans, didn't you?"
"Oh yes, they were 'on display' in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"

Or, as the movie version has it:

"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"But you found the plans, didn't you?"

Can you spot what has been removed from this scene, gentle reader, in order to shorten it? That's right. The jokes. The jokes have gone. The funny bits, the wit, the humour. The clever stuff that made it worth including in the first place.

Um, is anyone actually going ot have to pay to see this filum?

One of Simpson's main complaints seems to be that they have gone for *too much* surrealism, with the idea that anything surreal is supposed to be automatically comic, but isn't.

Like Arthur does with Earth. Er, wait.

One of Simpson's other complaints is them not getting "Hanging in the air exactly the way a brick doesn't". You try and art design that!

See the Simpsons thread, but to sum it up I like my lead characters to be LIKEABLE...

My first impression really early on in the film, was 'how are they going to end this'; the book, radio and tele plays have no concrete endings. a film needs an ending. And to this end they have added a couple of sub plots, one works and allows for more vogons one doesn't and appears to have been edited quite hard. In fact it looks like they had way to much film, or even script and had to edit it quite hard, which is unsurprising given Adams' manic writing style and habit of making changes up to the last minute. Also a result of this is that characters get resolution, but due to the time constraints of the film they are less fully fleshed out.

The other main contrast between the film and the books is that the books are very bleak in there outlook of humanity and indeed all sentient life. The film is a good deal more hollywood and more cheerful. The ending that it gets in happy.

So, good bits: Marvin, but he needs a monologue, the theme tune in THX glory, slartibartfast, Vogons, Vogon crabs, improbability, The book animations, steven Fry as the book.

bad bits; not enough time to develop any of the characters, or even find out if the actors are any good, too happy.

all in all it's been well resolved into a 2 hr film. Clearly they picked the bits they thought would work and haven't done a bad job. It's not the book, or the radio or tv series; it's not even a great film, but it is good fun and well worth seeing.

I reckon they should've done a Kill Bill/LOTR and made it into two films though and incorporated the rest of the books. This would have allowed for more character development etc.

They could do by jumping straight from Hotblack Desiato's ship to prehistoric earth and get rid of the whole plot involving Zaphod and the frogstar, less zaphod screen time would be a bonus.

> # The Guide entry on towels

but i doubt anyone there last night was mystified about the freebies. (you used to be able to buy hitchhikers towels, think it mentions it in that book gaiman wrote)

Well - according to the said Gaiman book, at least - its plot was lifted wholesale from a proposed early-80s Doctor Who film which never got made

...oh well apparently the observer are giving away TEN THOUSAND on sunday, as well as a free copy of TRATEOTU, so it's not the end of the world (oh no, hold on...)

'I don't go out - well, I do, but I like smaller groups because you can keep a handle on things, and you don't end up thinking, "How did I end up coming on this model's tits and then killing her?" If you stay in watching Antiques Roadshow, that kind of shit doesn't happen.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4461899.stm

But I didn't want to blurt it out because I've been accused of randomly bringing up freemasons too much recently.

Yes, I saw it last night, nyeah nyeah nyeah nyeah.

Emsk and I were very nervous, after all that we'd heard. But! Although they did change lots of things around, and left out some things which I don't understand why they left out (funny random one liners and stuff that could easily have been left in) - they did actually manage to capture the spirit of the thing.

The casting was actually excellent. Mos Def was a much more believable Ford - I could believe him as an alien masquerading as an out of work actor from Guildford. Trillian was fantastic - an actual cool chiX0r who I would have liked to have *been* rather than a blonde bimbo. (Although the one added "damsel in distress" sequence was sooo totally unnecessary, even though it led to one of the funniest sequences of the film.) Arthur Dent had a lot to live up to - he was more hassled imposition rather than the sputtering indignance of Simon Jones. And Zaphod...

MAN, HE WANTS TO PAINT MY TOENAILS!!! Clearly a crush of shame.

I won't spoil the ending, I promise I won't. But I was actually speechless with laughter. If only Marvin had a Scottish accent, it would have been Marcello TRYING IT with all of ILX.

I'm sure there will be a sequel. In fact, the last line is "Are you hungry? I know a great restaurant at the end of the universe..." (sorry that wasn't a huge spoiler.) so I'm sure there will be a sequel.

http://www.mtv.com/shared/movies/features/h/hitchhikers_guide_050426/

But it was very, very, very, VERY funny. Laugh out loud funny, constantly. And subtle things as well as the obvious ones. Even though I've read the book a dozen times, they were still funny.

Though in googling this, I found out that Douglas Adams introduced Richard Dawkins to Dawkins' future wife, Lalla Ward AKA Romana. This is the best fact ever.

should i go and see this film, having never read any of the books, or heard the radio series, or seen the tv series?

or should i do one or all of the three items listed above? if so, in which order? and why?

(i can't believe i never read any of the original books even - i was a Stainless Steel Rat nut as a nipper, for example)

Why not? There's no *one* real version to the story, and while this will be the first not overseen all the way through by Adams, it's still a version. Give it a whirl, I figure.

Me? I don't mean anything.

Margaret & David said that's what makes it like the books/radio serial, and they're right. I've read the first two books a million times and I still get new things out of them. By all accounts the highly-compressed nature of the film means it'll be just as rich and dense.

As an avowed Divine Comedy fan, I loved hearing Neil Hannon reprising 'So Long And Thanks For All The Fish' over the end credits.

I used to work with a middle aged man named Pau1. He was an gruff sort, a very clever man with apparent health problems. Despite his abruptness of character and impatience with others, we became quite close and I was very fond of him. Sadly, last year he died very suddenly. Following his death I learned some very interesting things about him, most notably his antagonism towards a certain Douglas Adams. It appears they were both at boarding school and shared a dormitory together. At the time Pau1 was very fond of writing poetry - but it seems Adams wasn't quite so keen on the results. When Adams was creating a sci-fi series for the BBC, he remembered Pau1 and wrote this:

"Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Asgoths of Crea.... The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Pau1 Nei1 Mi1ne J0hn5t0ne of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison."

Pau1, obviously very hurt by this slander, forced Adams to change the name in the book and later editions of the recordings to "Pau1a Nancy Mi11st0ne Jenning5", but Pau1 remained quite bitter, especially when examples some of the poetry (about swans) started circulating on the internet. When a biography of Adams emerged a couple of years ago the whole issue was brought up again, and Pau1 was severely affected by it, though I was not aware of the reasons for this at the time. I don't know if any of this contributed to his early demise, but without going into details his death the whole affair was a certainly a very tragic one.

I just like the Divine Comedy.

I missed the digital watches jokes. If only Adams could have come up with some kind of similar meme for mobile phones or something.

That's slanderous humour!

With a "u".

ebert: "It wants only to be loved, but movies that want to be loved are like puppies in the pound: No matter how earnestly they wag their little tails, you can adopt only one at a time."

ouch.

I'm worried this is a "fan's movie" which I really hoped it wouldn't be. I'll still see it I suppose.

Surely the truest 'fan's movie' of late is Sin City working overtime to Not Change One Tiny Thing.

Bits of it were rubbish, most of it was very good, and some of it was inspired. A decent, respectable movie addition to the whole H2G2 canon - nothing of which in its own individual medium is perfect anyway, remember.

Frankly I was shocked by the amount of original material they actually kept in - huge chunks of dialogue were lifted wholesale from the original show(s), and while a lot of it was truncated, only those who knew the stuff verbatim really cared anyway.

I also strongly suspect (OK, know), that they are keeping abck a lot of material for an extended DVD release.

I'm grumpy today

The writer of that review has since announced that, because of the reaction that his review of the film got, he has shut down the entire website and will never ever write anything about Douglas Adams or the Hitchhikers' Guide ever again.

sam rockwell was really pretty annoying--such a one-joke character. mos def wasn't particularly great either.

Marvin was handled pitifully.

The Muppets were indeed awesome, I must say. Best Vogons ever. Barrister wigs! Dowdy civil servant glasses!

Zooey Deschanel as Trillian was actually probably the best take yet on the character, who is, essentially, characterless (as are arguably all the main four beyond being wonderful shells, at least in the initial bouts of creation, but anyway). Mos Def as Ford not necessarily *the* best but rivals Geoffrey McGovern's original take, where that had amiable commentary mixed with desires for parties whereas Mos Def's take was more that of the spastic nerd-meets-roving dude variety. Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent okay enough, hard to get a bead on the character since he seemed to be changing moods and modes a lot, which made it rather disjointed. Sam Rockwell *far* too one note alas, he reduces the bizarre, wonderful megalomania of Zaphod to 'cool dude who isn't' and it suffers, though the script I think shortchanged him as well. Alan Rickman as Marvin initially disconcerting but I grew to like it, John Malkovich should have just been the scene as the bizarro preacher (which worked wonderfully) rather than anything else further, Stephen Fry as the book perfect, Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast amiable. Simon Jones's cameo as the Magrathea message system was a nice touch and it was good to see and hear him again.

Biggest flaw -- *TOO* rushed, *TOO* busy. Incredibly jumbled mix at many points, overkill on music and sound seeming to squash a fair amount of the dialogue. No pauses for breath and emphasis in the dialogue exchanges, you felt you were skipping along maniacally at points. When you consider that something like LOTR was able to reduce down so much and make it work while not always moving at 180 MPH where with a comparatively much smaller amount of script/text/draft Hitchhiker's as noted by someone above balanced off a couple of dragged out moments with hyperspeed everywhere else, the result was disjointed. My solution would have been simple and Ed hinted at it -- toss the romantic subplot, remove the extraneous motivation moping, forget the happy ending as such that's created. Whatever the intent of the filmmakers it felt too conventionally Hollywood-tacked on and as a result was very distracting.

A film of many amusing moments though no outright belly laughs (except for one at the end, Marvin's perfect moment of glory). I did like all the little details crammed in, production designs were great, looks and sounds good (if as noted goes a little too far on the latter point). Loved the whale sequence, all the book bits, and the yarn sequence. The conception of Deep Thought was neat but the whole sequence stumbled a bit. Mice were great!

Favorite geek moment that I don't think anyone's mentioned yet: did you catch the original TV series Marvin standing in the queue on Vogsphere?

My final thought -- catch it but at matinee prices. Yeah, I'll get the DVD. But if they end up not making enough of a financial splash to create the demand for a sequel, I'm afraid I wouldn't be surprised, though I wouldn't necessarily be crushed either, if you get my drift.

The film burbles along at an amusing canter, occasionally rising to levels worthy of a chuckle. But unlike the books and radio series, it rarely makes you laugh out loud.

My biggest problem with the movie was the romantic subplot, which was not just tacked on, but which the movie's characters were structured around. Hence the sudden startling one-dimensionality of Zaphod, because he needed to be the evil "other man" in this subplot, and hence also Arthur's one-dimensionality, as the lonesome romatic loser instead of the confused British Earthling, which if you think about it is a much richer role... but yeah, you're right about Trillian being one-dimensional to begin with. But I do think that if you lost the need to make the characters conform to this awful romance angle, the movie would have been much better. (Also, likely much more incomprehansible to non-fans.)

it's always going to be the original 12 episode series for BBC Radio 4, and I hope they get those back into print by tomorrow because this movie made me want to listen to them again all the way through as soon as possible...

I will also say that hearing the theme song in the film, and in such a grand way, was very satisfying. The dolphin song I enjoyed because it made me think of Muppet songs from their movies!

I remember making myself a Zaphod second head out of papier mashe back in '81. I even walked down the street with it on!

also, on TV, doesn't The Book say that Arthur "totally failed to get off with" Trillian at the party, whereas in the film it is "totally blew it with"?

I THOUGHT so, but it really flashed by too quickly for me to be sure.

You Zaphod haterz are all wrong. He wants to paint my toenails. Clearly.

Do you think they will make more?

also they way they did zaphod's head (vertically rather than horizontally) totally SUCKED!! it really sucked most of the humour out of the character, i thought--i mean you pretty much only saw one at a time & they never interacted! wtf!

Relive the glory here:
http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

Definately didn't laught out loud much, but everyone around me was losing it. I Thought the movie was real. It met my expecations for a visually stunning film. Amazing in that department. and eventhough the special effects were everywhere, it flowed better than any sci-fi film ive seen in a while. The yarn sequence was awesome. liked the muppets alot too.

overall, a really CUTE movie that would have been phenomenal (for me) if I were still 12.

and the "DUM! DUM! DUM! DUM!" joke where it kept pulling back further and further to reveal the vogons around earth was kinda funny. but could have been executed better.

Martin Freeman seemed happy to stand there and hope people were big enough Office fans as not to notice that he wasn't doing anything whilst somehow managing to do it inconsistently, Zaphod was so atrotious as to render his character, his dialogue and most of the scenes he was in utterly unintelligable, Mos Def tried but didn't succeed, Marvin just was too burdened by being Alan Rickman the robot, the book seemed superflous and the flash animation was clunky and out of synch with Stephen Fry (plus it just reminded me of the Place stuff from Nathan Barley), the editing in general was shoddy and left up to a one second gap at the end of every scene or any Emotional Shot and the music MY GOD! will someone please score a movie with whilst looking somewhere near the screen this bleedin century please please.

Basically, shoot the director. The thing had bad pacing, bad direction of actors and it had no consistent look or feel to it. There's a great movie in the Hitchhikers material and it made it look like there was really little more than a so-so radio play in there. WHERE WERE DA JOKES? WHERE YOU HIDE DEM?

It just seemed strange that with such a rich wealth of snappy one-liners on hand to throw into the script it used so few. It can't have been as there wasn't time - I get the feeling that a few of the large special effects shots that went on too long (faceslappage, Zaphod's bullet dancing, Malkatraz on the table, zipping round the factory floor) were to blame.

I've only read the first book and seen the TV series a few times but it was a letdown, like eating a supermarket apple pie thats been in the fridge too long so it's cold and doesn't taste of anything.

THAT'S WHERE ALL THE JOKES WENT, ISN'T IT? I bet you a billion pounds that several jokes were cut so it wouldn't get the Godfuckers in the US in a tizz.

Ah! You felt that too. Yeah, Arthur's ability to somehow cope with it all after the destruction of the world is one of the most subtly amusing things about the whole storyline in whatever guise. Having him be soppy to Trillian in the bathroom sequence about it might have been more 'realistic' -- but you know, fuck that noise.

No kidding. I've been so amped for this movie....and I think Gear! just ruined my day (unintentionally).

http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/0563477881
http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/056347789x
http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/0563477024
http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/0563401826
http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/0563557664

The final three books in the Hitchhiker 'trilogy' have been adapted for Radio 4. Read synopses of the Tertiary Phase episodes. The Quandary and Quintessential Phases start on 3 May 2005.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/

This is a Hollywood-Financed Disney Version of a Much-Loved Cult Fable (HFDVMLCF) - frankly it could have been so much worse. I realise that's no excuse if you didn't like it, but this was always going to involve some compromise. I was so amazed at the stuff they actually kept IN. The film's many flaws are shared by many HFDVMLCFs, and indeed by many of the story's incarnations.

This is precisely the kind of pompous preciousness that the likes of Douglas Adams intended to satirise.

What I really love is that most of those who don't know the story at all (i.e. the multiplex masses) seem to love this movie, and that's surely the whole point of it - bringing it to more people?

Yes, like the absence of galactic best-seller "Who is this god fellow anyway?". No hang on, you're crazy.

As are people wanting a coherent story. The original books are all over the place as well, the only change they made to the entropy of the story was to give it an actual ending, which I liked.

Almost all of the characters are one-note in the books as well. I'm impressed they made Zaphod even more of an arsehole - the obvious (and wrong) thing to do would have been to make him a supercool hero.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. (That said, the larger cosmic joke that the Earth was just made by Magratheans via orders from mice is of course perfectly intact, so hey.)

As are people wanting a coherent story

I...don't think that's me in any event. It's when the sound mix is a little more incoherent than the story that I start to wonder!

I'm impressed they made Zaphod even more of an arsehole

Got so *tiring,* though -- naturally he can't be made a supercool hero, the point is he ISN'T cool, but thinks he is. But that's all there was here, and I don't think it's purist to say that's not enough -- I said up above that all the characters are ultimately essentially ciphers, delivering lines in hilarious situations (thus for instance Zaphod's great 'Hey, is this guy boring you?' introduction in the film, which I loved). Whether it was the screenwriter or the director or Rockwell or whatever, there wasn't the necessary spark there to make it all work over the course of the film, it just ground me down.

Did anyone genuinely have expectations that this film would be perfectly in line with their own perfectionist standards?

Of course not! Hello, I made the comparison to LOTR for a reason. Let me spell out something more thoroughly:

Me thinking about LOTR: "I can't think about how I might have done this better if I was in charge. Purists complaining can take a hike."

Me thinking about this, admittedly after only the one viewing: "Mmmmf. I *can* think about how I might have done this better. Purists can still take a hike."

and that sad, the movie still does have a lot of problems--as a movie, as an adaptation--and "people seemed to like it at theatre i went to" is not really a bulletproof artistic defence.

Maybe I'll rent the DVD when it comes out, watch it with the sound off and see if it syncs up with my LP of the original radio show.

I might watch the TV series again, at some point.

Also, Zooey and those big eyes of hers make everything better.

Also, did anyone else think that this was a Gilliam-movie that never was?

For all the grousing, I am glad enough it's done so well, Kingdom of Heaven will knock it off next weekend, but just maybe it'll hang on well enough through May. Perhaps number two won't be so surprising a prospect.

I will definitely say that there is *no* obvious pattern anywhere on the success or failure of the film, whether people I've talked to in person or here or elsewhere -- there's no common thread I can see in terms of who has really enjoyed or hated or whatever regarding the film, not based on familiarity with the sources, not based on nationality. It's actually kind of refreshing.

Same here. It's been a few years since I watched the BBC show (which I love) and much longer since I read the books. So I left the theater with a feeling of "meh..." but not quite being able to place what was wrong with it. As ridiculous as this fanboy review* is, it reminded me of exactly what was missing and why the film looked and felt ok on the surface but somehow seemed to lack the spirit of the original.

* http://planetmagrathea.com/longreview1.html

I'll definitely say this -- get the same production/effects team in to do Restaurant and the restaurant itself will be one *hell* of a setpiece. (But how do the Universe ending? You can't top that!)

but to have the heads not interact at all--and for him to only have one head for most of the movie--i mean what's the point?! so weird.

a) The actual jokes from the book, with a couple of notable exceptions (Bill Bailey as the sperm whale!) just didn't translate to film very well. Although I got the feeling they were rushing through the destruction of Earth/Vogon poetry stuff in order to get to the rest of it.

b) The new jokes did actually work. Zaphod attempting to fly a caravan, the bloke standing there painting Ayre's Rock, the bureaucratic Vogon dole office/prison, "what are cows?" etc.

I thought Zaphod was great - making him into the most obnoxious cunt possible is the way forward. Martin Freeman as Arthur wasn't quite pathetic enough, a bit too heroic for my liking, at least up until the Magrathea sewction. Ford seemed largely peripheral (although he doesn't actually DO too much in the latter half of the first book IIRC). Giving more of a role to Trillian other than vague object of Arthur dent longing was good, ditto increased Vogon action.

Worst bit - not actually showing the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. If you're going to go out of your way to include it in the film, at least do it properly. Oh, and not shouting "RESISTANCE IS USELESS!" properly.

They should have deviated more to create an actual film, even at the risk of pissing off dedicated fanboys. Either that or get the funding to make it a miniseries with the same level of production value.

As it was, the stuff borrowed from the books played well, but the narrative seemed slapped together. I really liked Mos Def, he seemed most in touch with Adams' humor and Marvin/Rickman was good for what little he got to do. Space Elvis was horrible, Arthur was suitably plain and, sad to say, Trillian/Zooey still can't act.

And the bloke pushing up mushrooms! I think they had a lot of fun with that bit.

The little space dance/bootheels click when Ford meets Zaphod was great.

Let me posit something here -- however one feels about things, there's a difference between thinking that he should be made the most etc., which I have zilch problem with as an approach, and thinking that the effort to do so worked in the end. At least we should agree on that, otherwise we're going to be talking cross-purposes forever on this point.

Will Mos Def have to fake a British Accent so he can at least "pretend" to be be from Guildford?

...I did like how they handled that in the end!

In retrospect I am mildly outraged at the complete omission of the references to the Guide's entry for Earth. 15 years of research resulting in no change but adding a "mostly" to "harmless" is one of my favorite editor jokes ever.

-- Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) ([email protected]), May 2nd, 2005.

That was the only big laugh for me in the whole thing. Actually, I did like the part where they had a guy on scaffolding painting the desert cliffs with a brush.

question: do you SEE a pan-galactic gargle blaster in the movie?

Yes. Apparently you drink it out of a (kooky outer space) martini glass.

actually the funniest bit in the movie was when arthur and Ford were about to be expelled from the ship and Ford sees something by a door and says, "Wait what's this? What's this? (fiddles with it) This is nothing, we're going to die."

So basically all of the funny bits were visual but the filmmakers missed out completely on the verbal humor that makes Douglas Adams' writing so great. It would have been amazing if these visual jokes were added on top of the existing funny wordplay but why did they sacrifice one for the other?

Much of - nay, whole chunks of - Adams' words strode across this movie like a colossus. They were the lynchpin, and the "new, visual" gags wree complimentary to this, not the other way round.

I have a strong feeling that with hindsight after a cooling off period (say, the DVD release or even the TV screenings down the line) the initial disappointments of this movie for many will fade. There's certainly a huge amount to enjoy in it and I think history will serve it very well, and I even think it will stand up to repeated viewings. Picture that then - a genuine future cult classic at no.1 on both sides of the Atlantic...

Ach, I think I was just hoping for that bittersweet existentialist thing that I always got from Douglas Adams stuff and I didn't really feel it at all which has given rise to a bit of uppityness about the whole thing. For what this seemed to want to do, Men In Black did it a whole lot better.

Zooey Deschanel... also plays ukulele for the band If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies.

That should do it.

The rendering of the Improbability Drive was great. Also, the "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" song was fantastic.

Good lord, now I have just remembered that film. I wish to hide.

lovely zooey.

mos def v. good, kind of reminded me of michael pollard.

the movie didn't feel complete/like an entire movie and seemed more like an introduction for the rest of the series, which it is--it should have been something else, too.

Just about all of the peripheral characters, imo, were excellent. The mice, slarti, the vogons, the preacher... Marvin was terrible, but mostly because he was used incorrectly. I liked the design on his character, but he was too R2D2 and not enough C3PO.

I thought the Guide stuff was handled very well (bless you, Stephen Fry), but it really, REALLY didn't mesh well with the plot-centered stuff, and as a result the whole movie just felt like a big old mess, to echo several posts in this thread.

Overall, I'd give it a C or a C+, mostly based on the visuals and the strength of the source material.

http://fan-sites.org/zooey/4images/data/media/59/hollywood04c.jpg

Margot Kidder:

http://www.geocities.com/canadian_sf/pages/gifs/kidder.jpg

Separated at birth?

: )

(fwiw: I've read the books like 3-4 times apiece)

I'm pretty much with giboyeux on this movie.

I enjoyed it, whilst thinking it could have been much better. The John Malkovitch subplot was a waste of space, which made it odd because everything else seemed rushed to fit it in. But I think fourteen year old boys will love it, and since they ARE the worlds number one movie audience, it will probably be seen as a flawed success.

I don't think it harms Synola's or Hammer & Tongs careers if you know what I mean.

(I bet someone has already mentioned it upthread, but I just thought I'd remind you)

Anyway, I thort it was very (oh god yes) pretty and I enjoyed it very much despite being an enormous rockist. However, I still haven't got over the BETRAYAL of Trillian being a rubbish blonde bimbo in the TV series, so I think I am clinging to this film's version a bit too tightly now.

Only comparison I could think of off the top of my head re: black hairstyle and outfit. (Also I've no idea who Anna Chancellor is in the first place.)

Nor for that matter is wearing clothes.

I think the films is bizarre in one of the few films I can think of where the cast embody the ethos of the concept much better than the script does. Which is a pity. I have a feeling there are lots of "pacing" cuts made by Douglas Adams which they then clung to because they were "sanctioned". I would have liked to have seen a few more original guide bits, and perhaps some innovative use of split screen for the guide. Post 24 we still aren't treated to decent split screena ction, and it strikes me it would be a good chance to try it out. Since the thing is ridiculously complicated anyway.

*cough* If perhaps I needed to put the Crying Game part of my original observation in glowing huge letters, then that is my mistake.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but it did seem quite inconsequential and ramshackle; almost as if very little really happened at all, and what there was went past at such a speed that it became confusing. I liked Mos Def a lot. I kind of always like Martin Freeman, I suppose. Stephen Fry was good. Also, the factory floor scene was rather beautiful.

Anyway, I saw two films at the weekend. Triple X 2 and this one. One was a thousand times more engaging than the other. Ice Cube rules. Can you guess which? Zooey was much better in Elf, she was in Elf right? I agree with the tedious accusation. I saw a bit of the old BBC version on TV last night, it was much funnier. I mean they didn't explain about the towels 'til the end credits. They were mean to the robot (part of my reason for not liking the film much). Robot under-utilisation = poor film, one of the 32 golden rules of film-making.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. I'm just experimenting with a fancy new posting style. I could probably just have posted a one line response. Later dudes!

but i thought the whole idea of that robot was that he was under utilised.

(1) Anna Chancellor looked really like Davina McCall
(2) The cow thing in the babelfish entry in the guide was the loudest I laughed out loud
(3) I wonder if my eyes would look as big as Trillian's if I got a fringe cut instead of my straggly mop

Unfortunately everyone beat me to the first, and Pete beat me to the second

I liked it in a totally different way to the books and the TV show (niether of which I have paid any mind to for a while). It took about fifteen minutes for me to stop wanting them to be the characters as they were in the TV show and just to watch it as a film in its own right. The start, with the bulldozers outside Arthur's house scene was much funnier in the book and the TV, which I was a bit miffed about, but past that I kind of got into watching the film rather than comparing it to things that it wasn't.

Dunno; are you Zooey Deschanel?

in my dreams.

-- Stupornaut

'It's rather like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick'.

This is so OTM. Making out that Arthur might be the only man who really "gets" Trillian was so unforgivably wrong! There were far too many yucky love bits.

Also, the POV gun was RUBBISH.

The desperate unfunniness of the lines "I'm British, I know how to queue" and "The gun doesn't work on me, I'm already a woman" ruined the film for me.

No accounting for taste, I guess.

x-post

x-posts

Humour? Satire? Exposition? No mawkish love interest?

This is exactly how I felt.

There were a bunch of things that the books/radio play did which would never translate to film as the humor was inherent in the way Adams described the scene, not in the action of the scene itslef. Unless an omniscient narrator was going to read prose out loud throughout the entire movie, large chunks of it were going to have to change in order to make sense in a movie context.

Melding Trillian and Fenchurch made a lot of sense to me, too, especially considering that Arthur and Trillian were already attracted to each other before finding themselves thrown into a situation where they were literally the last two human beings alive.

Which actually brings up a side point -- I wasn't sure how they were going to be using the voice of the guide, and had half figured that it would just be something where Stephen Fry would pop up whenever the guide was consulted (I figured Arthur would understandably be poking around in it a lot). So to see them go ahead and replicate the half-narrator/half-source sound model of the radio/TV productions was kinda neat, and carried itself well.

Reflecting on the whole thing, as I muttered above, has certainly made the movie grow fonder in my mind, but I still reacted negatively to the romantic twist, less that it was there maybe than how it was executed (I'm sorry, but the shower scene was just, to use Adam's phrase, mawkish). Like I said above: "Whatever the intent of the filmmakers it felt too conventionally Hollywood-tacked on and as a result was very distracting."

I was mostly interested in the lines the film walked, how it aims to please the sci-fi set, adults, and the disney kids. I was impressed how much of the britishness it kept. I mean, the film is being marketed here to kids, it's impressive they'd even use the phrase "I'm British, I know how to queue", the theater I was in was filled with children who surely didn't understand the word queue. I did think the delivery was awkward, and again, I didn't laugh out loud, just smiled.

But I was a huge Office fan and Martin Freeman can do no wrong.

I was mostly interested in the lines the film walked, how it aims to please the sci-fi set, adults, and the disney kids. I was impressed how much of the britishness it kept. I mean, the film is being marketed here to kids, it's impressive they'd even use the phrase "I'm British, I know how to queue", the theater I was in was filled with children who surely didn't understand the word queue. I did think the delivery was awkward, and again, I didn't laugh out loud, just smiled.

But I was a huge Office fan and Martin Freeman can do no wrong.

Oh yeah, I really enjoyed the love-interest aspect of the film, perhaps others who hadn't been weened on the books/tv/radio do as well.

My favourite funny bit in it was the "as in the late Arthur Dent" joke :-)

Er, you do know he's dead, right?

!!!!

I cannot see anyway to make this film without it being disappointing. The streches of imagination the books, and moreover the radio (the medium ever, fact fans!), required you to make (eg "brain the size of a planet".....marvin always seemed awesome when i was a kid - i didnt like his silly little legs and arms in this) renders it impossible. (bit like TV series of gormenghast - dont bother!).

i thought it looked really good this film, i liked the way the deisgners had been able to mess about with what they thougth things looked like (the vogon bus is CRUCIAL!), and i thought it coped with he supposed demands of a hollywood audience okish with the needs of original fans. ok the romantic thing grated, but i got the feeling the makers of the film were as uninterested in that angle as the audience were.

zaphod actually seemed pretty close to what i had imagined him to be like all those years ago, although he seemed quite a bad actor, all his lines seemed to fall flat.

my favourite line "zaphods just this guy, you know?" got buried a bit :(

er, he did have about fifteen years of having written So Long And Thanks to get over it with

Isabel - who saw one episode of the TV show as a kid and has avoided Hitch-Hikers ever since, thinking it's just "smug boy jokes" - loved it to bits and is also listening with me to the radio show. Happy household harmony!

Am I to understand that Arthur gets a girl in later books? Goodness me. The romance plot surprised me a little but Trillian as-was is obviously unworkable.

It annoys me that so many people I know have gone to see this and are like "SHITE, THE WORST FILM EVER" when to me it seemed a really good and human film. Even the cinema usher said to us on the way in "Ah this film is a load of BOLLOCKS". Do people really freak out so much as soon as the tiniest sliver of bare bones philosophy appears in a movie?

I am also one of the few who enjoyed the love interest part of the story.

Maybe all the above is cos I went with my girlfriend though!

I think I enjoyed it for the same reason I enjoy other films or books or records, it was serious but did not take itself seriously, there was no Hollywood bombast and it wasn't something you could walk out of and call "amazing" in a horribly over-sanctified way.

Very enjoyable.

I call you an appallingly self-satisfied idiot, if only for lumping HGTTG together with Jonathan Livingston Seagull. For fuck's sake, man.

not only gets her, but roots a lot! on-page. and in-air.

I don't remember a single thing about the last book except a massive disappointment with it. I seem to remember that he might have gotten divorced before that as well, is this correct? and fenchurch had a lot of elements of his exwife in her so he didn't feel like writing the character any more? massive misstep on his part that failed the whole series of books. really it's best to forget the last one even existed.

But that doesn't outweight the giant "Fuck you!" that book is to the series' characters and fans.

I am curious how the new radio series is going to treat it, though.

The thing is when I was coming back from the theatre, I could see what the people who didn't like it was on about and yes, there are a lot of shortcomings (missed and misplaced gags, awkward love story) but at the same time I think it was a really good effort.

There's something about it that makes me think it might work much better as a stay-at-home DVD movie that you can see again and again - kinda reminded me of the Princess Bride. The Princess Bride also didn't work at the cinema but you can see why it's a classic now - something about the pacing, the lack of strong characterization, and jokes that aren't that funny until five minutes later.

Anyway... I was gonna add after that it seems like the sort of movie that's underwhelming at first but gets funnier the more you watch it.

x-post.

Cathy, did the POV gun irritate you because it's a lazy joke or do you feel that women aren't socialized to be more empathic than men?

as I said, earlier on this thread (I think), it did not actually anger or upset me.

I liked when they were woollen, too.

It's been years since I've seen the TV series, so I can't remember if the guide stuff was funny in it.

I think it was but not quite to the extent we see in the film, how much that's really down to Shynola I'm not sure but given the way their own collective s.o.h. and playfulness has manifested and been demonstrated in their other work I'm hoping they did have a big influence here.

Where did the So Long And Thanks For All The Fish song come from? Was there a Hitchhikers musical? And the John Malkovich character wasn't so prominent in the books, if he was in them at all?

Didn't like the glaringly obvious OH HEY LOOK HERE ARE SOME MICE RUNNING AROUND EVERYBODY REMEMBER THE MICE THEY'RE IMPORTANT THESE MICE shots they kept doing every ten minutes.

As for the film wrapping up the plot, it ends without Zaphod getting half his brain back. Something about that was really annoying.

a) a Point-Of-View Gun
b) a knife that toasts bread as you slice it.
c) a threesome with Martin Freeman and Zoey Deschanel.

This is my one big problem with it. Therefore I'm not sure whether to recommend it to someone not familiar with the books. Otherwise it pwns the old TV series.

After a couple viewings I'm a little disappointed they never covered that Trillian is supposed to be half-spaceman in this version, since that clears up a major plot hole in the end (and in the books for that matter)

two things that are really really well done tbh:

mos def being shot with the POV gun by rockwell
bill nighy name reveal and reaction shot

would rather have more Hitchhiker's movies than crappy Narnia ones

I'll take both actually.
it's the harry potters that can get binned in my version.

yeah well I don't like those either

unless they add some hot Dumbledore man-on-man action lolz

alan rickman as the voice of shakey mo

I still want the paintings of mos def and alan rickman from that other movie they were both in together

this movie was such an unwatchable bag of shit

No, it wasn't.

some people have no respect for ugly muppets I guess

I think I may prefer the original BBC adaptation but this was still really good

or starships shaped like teapots that happen to have brake lights

I stand by what I said upthread, namely that it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be but I enjoyed it once I stopped comparing it to all of the other incarnations of HGttG.

Also the "Eddies in the space-time continuum" joke is one of the funniest thing Adams ever wrote in this series.

the "counterintuitive" casting of Mos Def really did not pay off, dude made a lousy Ford Prefect.

god this was terrible

I do wish they had handled Zaphod's two heads a little better. It was like they couldn't afford the CGI rendering necessary for two Sam Rockwell's.

I enjoy the idea that there is a canon here to bitch about straying from.

It should have been a completely line by line faithful adaptation of the Infocom game.

everything that happens on planet malkovich could've been handled far better but really this is as excellent a film as you can probably ever hope to make from the material at hand.

Also the vogons trying to sneak around the back at the end and being foiled by mos def with a towel + a locked waist-high fence gate was very python

underrated movie. nerds were ready to pounce from the get-go as if someone violated their koran.

it just wasn't funny enough; everything else about it could have worked, but the jokes didn't carry this time. I really feel now that this was best suited to radio and then books and needn't have moved on from there.

This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move.

i didnt give a shit about the "true-to-form" adaptation, i just thought it was really really terrible, and literally unwatchable (a room full of us made it through about 40 minutes and then decided we all hated it so much we wanted to turn it off). not funny, badly acted.

funny, well-acted, rather obviously edited in probably about a day.

I mean the whole acting issue I don't have a problem with because really the only person who is supposed to be behaving remotely like a normal person is Dent, and I think Freeman nails him.

^^^^^^^otm

I didn't think this movie was much cop, but I've just sat thru Next and it makes this look like Battleship Potemkin.

the few things that were vaguely funny were funny in the same way that you get a tiny bit of amusement out of someone making the umpteenth iteration of a holy grail joke despite yourself

xposts ok editing might be more of an issue than im giving it credit for

I think Rockwell could've stood to make his reading of Zaphod as George W. less heavy handed.

it was crap

now STFU all of you

It was so weirdly emasculated. This is the original exchange between Arthur and the foreman who's demolishing his house:

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine month."

"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 in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

In the film, that ended with the bit about the cellar. No flashlight, no missing stairs, no filing cabinet or lavatory or leopard - in short, no lols.

xpost yer arse

Also the vogons trying to sneak around the back at the end and being foiled by mos def with a towel + a locked waist-high fence gate was very python

yeah this was great "he's got a towel! run away, run away!"

I think Rockwell could've stood to make his reading of Zaphod as George W. less heavy handed.

wow @ this

If you can sit through all of "I Accidentally Domed Your Son" but not make it through "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", you might be crazy.

Also turning it off after 40 minutes misses a lot of the bits that were actually funny IIRC.

wow because it's rong or wow because you don't think it was obvious or too heavy-handed?

I liked Hitchhiker's Guide as a kid, but I don't care now so I feel like I watched the movie with few preconceptions and it just felt like one of those films that would be pointless if you didn't know the source material: not very funny, in need of a sequel it might well not get, visually pleasant enough but just kind of somewhere between wtf and meh. I'll watch Malkovich in anything tho.

Could've been funnier, yeah, but really it was fine.

-- Jordan (Jordan), Monday, September 26, 2005 10:08 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

I can't see a subtle GWB pisstake working at all, ever.

yeah I don't necessarily mean he should've done it that way but less, maybe just that he shouldn't have done it that way at all.

I can't see a subtle GWB pisstake working at all, ever.

But let's what Oliver Stone does with...oh.

I mean even Depp was a little more ambiguous about Jack Sparrow-as-Keith Richards. (xpost)

I definitely figured he was going for Bill Clinton anyway. I mean he scores in his first scene, how can that be dubya?

plus gwb talks at about 10 wpm, if he's really trying to do texas he's way off the mark

the few things that were vaguely funny were funny in the same way that you get a tiny bit of amusement out of someone making the umpteenth iteration of a holy grail joke despite yourself

deja vu

The problem with it was someone went "Douglas Adams funny and wacky and zany etc etc" and totally ignored how bleak the whole thing is.

I mean the Earth gets rebuilt and he gets the girl.....

^^^^ I agree with that, actually.

^^^pretty much this

(i still thought it was ok)

x-post

I liked the addition of the anna chancellor character with the zaphod crush

and somebody needs to do something interstin w/ Rockwell. dude totally has it in him (cf Confessions of a Dangerous Mind)

i always think of rockwell as the dude from heist

dude totally has it in him (cf Confessions of a Dangerous Mind)

Yeah, that's my favorite performance of his still.

he's extraordinary in Snow Angels. that's one should be bleak enough for all the bleaksters out there

he was funny in Stella as the fake mustache dealer ("nah man, i never use my own product").

stella was not funny ever

so rong

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiNIpOPhCNA

I thought the movie was pleasant enough with some parts that were pretty hilarious, but I couldn't help but notice the missing bits I expected (for example the cellar/leopard part described upthread)

I saw it with someone who had never read the books and they thought it was terrific. Maybe that's the audience then?

Yeah I think it helps if you've never read the books - my friends who've never read them love it too. I still don't think it's great but definitely thinks it gets funnier on the second or third rewatch. <3 Vogon planet and Mos Def and Bill Nighy. The effects are weird though – some bits are charmingly retro-looking (I know that they specifically did not want to use CGI unless absolutely necessary, hence lots of actual models and puppets and stop-motion and all that.) and other bits seem TOO well-done, like when they first see new Earth. Still... want more bleakness, as mentioned upthread, and more Marvin but overall, it's a pretty good if not great adaptation.

my wife never read the books and promptly fell asleep about 20 minutes into this (in the theater!). she tried to watch it on cable one day and said to me "that is one fucking unfunny awful movie"

has anyone seen the new hammer and tongs film yet?

I think you might be on one of those threads where nobody else gives a fuck what you or your possibly mythical spouse has to say

I might be trying a little bit to enjoy it, but the scene where SLARTIBARTFAST sez "WELCOME TO OUR FACTORY FLOOR" is more impressive in so many ways than anything else since silent running - something about putting a recognizable piece of earth stuff (tree, everest) next to your nonsense fantasy makes it that little bit more IMAX, even at home

SLARTIBARTFAST: Welcome to our factory floor!

It is next to impossible to do that line justice, from one end to the other, in context, on any size of film

1) still mad they fucked up zaphod so badly, seemed to completely miss the point of a two-headed character

2) sam rockwell fans should see the badly-named but great "snow angels," he's really good in it

3) son of rambow (new h&t movie) is really good, really funny and likeable, you should see it. just transcribed an interview i did with them last fall... will post when it's published next week i guess?

and 4) despite thinking they missed this up a bit, kinda wanna see it again

(hhg)

thought this, saw it again, still thought this

thought what?

this

and 4) despite thinking they missed this up a bit, kinda wanna see it again

-- s1ocki, Sunday, 4 May 2008 03:36 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link