Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[tabuno]

The trailer looks as fantastic as Sin City but with a more etheral look. It has that new-age space design, fresh, sharp, and otherworldly. It will be interesting if the low-key cast can transform this movie into a comic, outer space adventure like none that has gone before. This is a moderate risk movie where few actors or actresses have little to lose but a lot to gain. The balance between Douglas Adam's odd sense of British humor along with a dazzling sci fi epic will be a difficult balance for any scriptwriter or director to handle. To be comic with beautifully envisioned set designs is going to a real challenge. If successful, this movie will rival Dune for its difficulty rating.

[tabuno]

Unlike Star Wars and the various alien characters (that we've all seen bunches of), this "Galaxy Quest" live action approach to Douglas Adam's book, leaves something to be desire (though local critics here have loved it). After having experienced the amazing audiobook version of the book and not really having had actually a read experience just reading the book myself, the movie version caught me as uneven in its pacing and its translation onto the big screen. The required vision of any director, cinematographer of this movie had an even much more difficult challenge than Star Wars, Galaxy Quest, Final Fantasy, Lord of the Rings because this sci fi satire of comedic proportions was way out there. The use of animation probably would have given the director a lot more leeway, flexibility in creating an entertaining, comfortable universe. The devotion to the book was obvious, perhaps a little to much so. I enjoyed the most inhuman character in the movie - Alan Rickman's Marvin the robot with a big head.

The trailer also restricted itself to the most exotic, atmospheric images from the movie and failed to show the more ordinary or mundane sci fi clips that audiences have seen a numerous movie by now. Perhaps someone who didn't have strong expectations may be able to have a more enjoyable experience - yet the convoluted and at times surrealistic and unusual plotlines and devices in the movie may make it harder to follow and somewhat choppy and confusing as at least two things occur simultaneously the screen at times.

My conclusion is go buy the audiobook versions of each of the four Adam's novels instead.

[HorseradishTree]

Originally posted by tabuno
My conclusion is go buy the audiobook versions of each of the four Adam's novels instead.

Five: Hitchhiker's, Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe, and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless.

Haven't seen the flick, but I can't see how such a novel with heavy reliance on constant narrative can translate to film without being annoying.

[tabuno]

Only a few successful adaptations relying heavily on a book hve been in my mind outstanding, and in fact is my number one movie of all time, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975), a timeless story that will never age about three girls who go missing in the Australian outback. Joan Lindsay's book was brought to life in an amazing directorial production by Peter Weir.

I have to admit that the over-reliance on the dialogue straight from the book appeared forced most of the time, except for the wonderful Marvin character, a delightful treat, one of the best counterpoint in the whole movie. I can't say for sure if it was the forced dialogue and slavish devotion to some of the actual book's passages or the director and actors' inability in really handling Douglas Adams' vision. I somehow think that an animated version using the same dialogue would have worked out much better, especially considering the advance state of computer animation now. To select an animated version would have also be risky, however, since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was targeted more to adults. Thus, any animated movie would have to have been more of an adult animation product like "Fritz the Cat" (1972) but with high quality, surrealistic production value that is possible nowadays.

[tabuno]

If I recall correctly the audio book version only covered the first four books of Adams' Hitchhiker series.

[trevor826]

I found the pacing slightly odd, the first 20 minutes or so were fine then it was just a manic rush to the finish, it was a bit much though trying to condense the book into a single average length film.

Marvin was pretty cool though.

Cheers Trev.

[tabuno]

I recently saw one 1/2 hour episode of the British television version last week and now that I've seen the movie version, I have to admit that the television version contains (as would be suspected) a lot more of Douglas Adam's dialogue that is rich with British humor that makes Adam's series so entertaining and sustainable. In same ways, the television series is more appealing for its ability to focus on the pure illogic and play on words that is one of Hitchhiker's strongest points. Unfortunately, some of the low-budget sacrifices of the television version has a strong drag on the overall satisfaction of the movie.

On the otherhand, the delight of noticing that the movie version's narrator is may be by the same Stephen Fry who performed the audiobook version of the entire book, including every character! As I am one of those who perferred the audiobook over every other medium, including the books themselves, one can get the barest of experiences of what this audiobook version might be by focusing on the narrator and his ability to bring the words of Douglas Adams to life. In some ways, the movie version performers were more at a loss at how to actually perform their roles and their dialogues.

trevor826 has hit on a solid point in my experience of the movie. It really does seem to be choppy and disconnected in a number of ways that the extended book, television, and audiobook version are able to avoid. Perhaps it is the medium itself that really cramps the film adaptation. It would have been one heck of a risk, but it would have been interesting to have made the Hitchhiker's Guide into a series of full-length movies and brought the number of books onto the screen separately.