Hitchhikers Guide review

The wife and I saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this weekend. We both enjoyed it very much. The movie is not a direct translation of the novels and this is a good thing and a bad thing simultaneously. We miss a lot of explanations that are necessary for understanding what goes on (my wife kept asking me, "what's the deal with the towels?" because the towel entry wasn't shown) and a number of the jokes were pared to down to the "not funny" level. That said, much of the stuff that is hilarious to those accustomed to British humour just isn't funny at all to those who prefer American humour and the changes seem to reflect that. The special effects had the appropriate "WOW" factor and the production was in nearly all ways superior to the BBC televised version of the story ('nearly' because the guide entries of the BBC version are impossible to beat -- the film version is merely equal to them, which says a lot).

Goods:

• The spaceships. It's nice to see a space opera without the violence of constant space battles so we can sit and admire the cool technology and neat effects.
• The casting. Arthur and Trillian were perfectly cast. Mos Def does an alright job as Ford Prefect. The combination of Warwick Davis ("Willow") and Alan Rickman as Marvin the Paranoid Android was simply genius -- this is by far the best version of Marvin ever. Zaphod was merely ok, with the "how do we film a man with two heads" problem well taken care of, especially in relation to how it was handled in the BBC version.
• Jim Henson's Vogons. Okay, so it wasn't Jim Henson, RIP, who did them but the Vogons were well done by his company. Much better than the Dark Crystal and at the same level as Yoda.
• The old Marvin's cameo. Props to the source.
• The Special Effects. Actually quite special. Those surrounding the entire Improbability Drive were excellent. And the book animation was well done.

Bads:

• Missing a lot of jokes. No excuse for some of them.
• Missing a lot of guide explanations. This lead to confusion (especially about towels) and a great philosophical description of where the Earth fits in with all of the stuff in the galaxy (harmless). Disappointing.
• Ford Prefect went from a majorish character to a background character for no reason that I saw. Mos Def did an alright job with him but he just wasn't around that much.
• The directors/producers couldn't seem to decide if this was a romance, a space adventure, a comedy, an action flick, or what. This indecision left some of the pacing off and character explorations that seemed to go nowhere.
• Zaphod was merely OK. He should have been insanely great.

In the end H2G2 is a fun film. I was very satisfied and my wife enjoyed it and it could easily have been worse. I just hope the sequel (if there is one) works well too.

Verdict: Harmless

***

Edit: Another review here.