As you may have noticed, I seem to be incapable of giving "reviews" of books and movies. What I end up with is more or less a series of thoughts deriving from or arising out of something I've seen or read. Not a review, per se, but a contemplation. Hence, this is Not A Review of the movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that the reason I didn't see this movie in the theatre was because I heard they committed the unforgivable sin of "straying from the book." But make no mistake, I am a HUGE Hitchhiker fan. I have the five-book omnibus edition. I can quote large portions of the book (and was in fact able to say instantly while watching the movie, "Oh, the narrator is quoting directly from the book here"). I have been bringing the same towel on every vacation trip since I was 12, because everyone knows a real frood doesn't leave the house without his or her towel. Anyway, I saw the movie on Netflix and immediately ordered it.
I didn't think it was nearly as bad as this review thinks. Nor did I think it was as good as it could have been, mostly because it failed to make use of the great dialogue in the books and replaced it with stuff that I thought fell flat. I think a lot of the "Britishness" was lost, and I think it is precisely the British humor and not the plot (there isn't so much of a plot) that makes the books so recklessly good. Adams' writing is really about the language, and the best jokes are page-long asides that don't contribute to the plot. I don't think this necessarily translates well to the screen. I think it could have been done, but in order for it to be done, we would have needed a movie that was more Monty Python than Men in Black. I am not certain the movie would make sense at all to someone who hadn't read the books. There's an awful lot that's not explained, and thus comes across as totally zany and weird, but weird in an "off" way that I don't think would sit well with me as a viewer, though as said, I have the story memorized so we can't know what I would think. I thought Zaphod was uncomfortably, off-puttingly crazy, rather than "ex-hippie rock star alcoholic chill guy" crazy. I didn't have a problem with Mos Def as Ford Prefect exactly, but I think they ought to have done more with his character. I may, however, be biased because Ford Prefect has always been my favorite character.
A Memorable Ford Prefect Moment To Illustrate Why:
"'We are going,' said Slartibartfast, in a slow, measured voice, 'to try to prevent the war robots of Krikkit from regaining the whole of the Key they need to unlock the planet of Krikkit from the Slo-Time envelope and release the rest of their army and their mad Masters.'
'It's just,' said Ford, 'that you mentioned a party.'
'I did,' said Slartibartfast, and hung his head. He realized it had been a mistake, because the idea seemed to exercise a strange and unhealthy fascination on the mind of Ford Prefect. The more Slartibartfast unraveled the dark and tragic story of Krikkit and its people, the more Ford Prefect wanted to drink a lot and dance with girls.
The old man felt that he should not have mentioned the party until he absolutely had to. But there it was, the fact was out, and Ford Prefect had attached himself to it the way an Arcturan Megaleech attaches itself to its victim before biting his head off and making off with his spaceship."
What did I think was kind of awesome? In the books, Adams mentions that the dolphins, the second most intelligent species on Earth, knew of the Earth's impending destruction, and tried to warn the humans. Unfortunately, the humans didn't understand the message, and mistook it for a series of leaps and tricks. The last message from the dolphins, the book says, was in fact, "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish" (memorably quoted on my high school yearbook page in 1999, among other places). The dolphins "left the Earth by their own means" before the Vogons came, only it never says and I suppose I never speculated what those means were exactly. In the movie, the dolphins perform an elaborate montage with a "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish" song. And then at the end, hilariously, they leap straight out of the ocean and zip up to the stars (see photo). And it was kind of awesome. (Seriously. Almost awesome enough for me to consider putting that picture on the top of my blog instead of the ocean that's there right now... would that be weird? Like, really weird? I suspect it might.) The jewelled scuttling crab leaping across the surface of the planet Vogsphere going, "Wheee!" was also endearing to me.
But, as Douglas Adams himself wrote, "There's no accounting for taste."
