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.'"

My review

[a3217055]

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...

This movie is bad

[scourfish]

This movie is bad. Really bad. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly bad it is. I mean, you may think that Battlefield Earth is a wrong choice for an evening rental, but that's just peanuts compared to this movie.

The beginning was good, but a lot of the dialogue got truncated before it got witty, and the additional stuff wasn't very funny.

I dunno, maybe I was expecting a rehash of the 1981 BBC version (which is better than OK) with better visuals.

Reviews Mostly Positive

[gad_zuki!]

over at rotten tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com]

Currently 62% positive

Re:My review

[Anonymous Coward]

Douglas Adams [wikipedia.org]

I love the movie!

[Buster Chan]

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.

Re:contradiction

[Mike1024]

Is it just me .. or does that statment sort of contradict itself.
One of the main things I enjoy about Douglas Adams works is the humor.

Well, the 'not all that funny' criticism falls into two categories:

1) Removed jokes, for instance the planning permission on the bottom of a filing cabinet in a locked underground toilet with a sign saying 'beware of the leopard' on the door. This is justifiable in a way; it simply wouldn't be practical to put everything from the books into the film.

2) Dry humour delivered in silence. For instance, 'do you know how much damage would be caused to this bulldozer if I let it run over you? / No / None at all'. It's funny. But no-one is laughing. I don't know how to fix that; it might be a problem with the film medium for this type of humour. A laughter track, for instance, would be shite.

Soooooooo.... what's my opinion? Well, it's a competently made movie. It's well cast, it has decent graphics, it has it's amusing moments. I would classify it as 'ok to good'. I would have classified the book as 'good to very good, tending towards the latter'. So no, I didn't think it was as good as the book, but it was ok. Nothing like as bad as that first review on slashdot made out.

7 out of 10 from me.

Michael

Re:contradiction

[LordLucless]

Which is exactly why I like Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency more than Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and recommend it to all me DNA-less friends before HHGTTG.

Dirk Gently is still funny, has less of the absurdist asides, has a plot, and one that is funny in its own right, has a bit of character development, and even inspires the occasional emotion apart from humour in the reader. And I like some Coleridge's poetry too :)

Re:My review

[skuk]

http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/0563477024 [bbcshop.com]

http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=srmr&page=title &r=ABCD&title=142571 [play.com]

http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=srmr&page=title &r=ABCD&title=142570 [play.com]

its

[Anonymous Coward]

Apostrophe, front page; no.

STAY AFTER CREDITS!!!!

[madaxe42]

Stay and watch the credits - about 3 or 4 minutes into them there are some bonus scenes from the guide!

Re:h2g2?

[slim-t]

Why is it called h2g2?

HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy

HHGG -> H2G2

Re:Better with the books

[shawb]

Also, in the credits, the BBC is thanked for providing the original Marvin suit from the TV series. I haven't watched the series yet, but is that how Marvin looked?

It's the robot standing in line on Vogosphere.

Yes, Zaphod is supposed to seem Stupid

[drivers]

from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 12:

One of the major difficulties Trillian experience in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.

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.