For Douglas (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (DVD))

Member Name: drewboy

Product:	The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (DVD)
Date:	05/05/05 (132 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its Hitch Hikers, Special Effects, The towels!

Disadvantages: Not entirely true to the origionals, Too Hollywood/Americanised, Inconsistances I dont believe Adams would have done

It all seems a perfectly normal morning for Arthur Dent who goes about his morning business in his dressing gown and then sits down to enjoy his breakfast. However, when he notices his morning cup of tea edging towards the table and a slight rumbling of the rest of the china ware he moves, somewhat hesitantly, towards the window.

Cut to him now, rather than enjoying his cup of tea, lying on his back directly in the way of a JCB waiting (not entirely patiently) to knock down his house to make way for a new by-pass. Understandably, Arthur is not best pleased at the mornings turn of events and even less pleased with the foremans lack of sympathy who simply states that the plans had been on display in the basement of the public library for some time.

However for Arthur, a rather unexpected request from his newly arrived mate Ford Prefect (though strangely expected if you know him well enough) to go to the pub for a drink comes along and after accepting the builders won't demolish his house due to the lager Ford had just given out, goes with him.

Ford is acting strange. Or rather stranger than normal if there is such a thing. Ordering them both six pints of bitter each, he starts to go on about the end of the world, telling the barman that if he really wants to put a bag over his head in preparation to go ahead, but if wouldn't really help.

However, Arthur really isn't paying attention and as he hears a worrying crash outside. And yes, as he feared, his house was now no more but as he desperately sifts through the ruins, the workers all start to run and he hears yet another worrying thing being said above him, which was coming from a rather more worrying gigantic object…….


I don't think I can adequately put into words how excited I have been waiting for this film to come out. For as long as I can remember, I have loved, no, adored the Hitch Hikers guide to the Galaxy (true guide geeks will spot the difference there!) series of books and have read it at least twice or three times a year for the last 10 years. The comic genius that was the late Douglas Adams is second to non in my opinion so when it went on release in the cinemas I was there as soon as I could manage.

Standing in the queue for my ticket, a number of thoughts were passing through my head. "Will it be as funny? Will it look anything like what I have been seeing in my head all these years? How much will they change and how much will they add? What will Marvin sound like? Just how WILL they manage Zaphoid? Well, to those of you who haven't read the book you may be going "eh?" right now, but to the rest who have, the answers are mostly (no, not the number you get when you multiple six by seven…) yes and no.

The Story
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Of course the story was going to be slightly different. The history behind the Guide is one of evolution where Adams basically changed bits he didn't like, and added bits that he thought should be added each time he wrote it for a different medium (the Guide has been shown on TV and broadcast on radio as well as published as a book). So I was prepared for that. The basic premise remained the same where after the unfortunate event of the demolition of Arthur's house happened, the even more unfortunate event of the demolition of Earth happened. At which point, Prefect (who had very recently in the pub came out as an Alien) grabbed Arthur and 'hitched' a ride on the Vogon ship that was currently destroying the planet. After being caught by the Vogons and subjected to 3rd worse poetry in the universe are ejected into space they are improbably saved by Zaphod Beeblebox and Trillian in the stolen Heart of Gold spaceship. The story then goes on basically in the same way as the book does however adding changes here and there. My personal opinion on the changes is rather mixed though. Without revealing these changes, all I can say is that while some of then made perfect sense to how you would imagine Adams writing them, some of them did not and in fact, were at odds to what you would have expected. The main thing for me was that Trillian was explained FAR too early on in the story and then the love story between her and Arthur was made far too much of in the plot. While there was subtle references to it in the book, it remained subtle as this just wasn't the point of the adventure they were all having, and was very much a side show in the overall story. Also, the parts of Zaphod and Prefect were pretty much put into the background of the story and not enough was made of these tremendously funny characters. The one thing that I was more than happy with however, was Marvin. I really did feel that he was there enough of the time without ever becoming too much of a focus in the story - exactly how I felt he was portrayed in the book.

Characterisation
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Following on from the story being subject to change, the characters had a fair bit of that as well. With the exception of Marvin and the Vogons, I saw differences in all the main characters which while again expected, was a mixed bag for me. While I actually didn't mind the fact that Arthur seemed to be a BIT more aggressive than I perceived him and that Trillian was a BIT more girly, Ford Prefect and Zaphoid seemed to be a lot less eccentric than what the voices in my head had told me. I think this can be linked to the downplaying of their roles in the storyline but as with the story, there really is another reason entirely for this. Douglas Adams started working on the screenplay for the movie however died before he got the chance to finish the transition so the job fell on Kary Kirkpatrick (The Little Vampire, Chicken Run).

This was a tough job for him to take on however, as Adams had not completed the screenplay, and in fact, had only really got to the stage of putting together some ideas into draft format. On choosing Kirkpatrick, the makers decided that since he had no knowledge of ANY of the other Guide interpretations, he would be able to take Adams idea's and see them for what they were rather than what a Guide fan would want to see them as. Terrific idea in theory, however I am just not too sure that it worked. Taking the story and characterisation as one, I couldn't help but feel that the basic ideal of the Guide was taken into account, then put to one side as they tried to get a Hollywood feel to it. Bit mistake. In doing this, I feel that a lot of the deadpan humour was lost and the characters were made to feel like they were all larger than life. Something that I really only ever belonged to Zaphod in the book.

Acting
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Again, I find it hard to comment here. If the actors were going on the material as to what they were to be like then they were spot on. Each took their respective parts and gave it everything they had. Sam Rockwell was great at handling the spit persona of Zaphod but then I personally didn't like the way the character was changed. I found it much funnier when he was arguing with himself rather than trying to suppress one of his personalities. Martin Freeman was great as Arthur Dent, though I felt he was not as deadpan as he should have been, rather having a bit of a new aggressive streak. Mos Def was not at all what I was expecting of Ford Prefect, but then he just was not a prominent enough character and it was not made clear at all that he is actually a writer for the Guide so he kind of faded into the background a bit. Stephen Fry was excellent as the Guide however, and his generic English accent fitted the role perfectly, as did Alan Rickman as Marvin although the actual robot left me feeling that his voice was somewhat detached from his body. A big disappointment for me, was Slartibartfast. To me, he was always so proud of his work on the Earth, specifically the Norweigan Fjords but this just did not come across with Bill Nighy. Once again though, was this down to him or the re-write? I just don't know!

Special Effects
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Here I am glad to say, everything went swimmingly. Being a sci fi adventure, they were going to have to pull something out of the bag to make it stand up and look half way decent next to all the other current films about at the moment. Generally everything was as it should be. The Vogons looked properly disgusting, their ships were nicely humungous (though not yellow, wonder why?), the Heart of Gold was a little bit like a Christmas Tree Baubel but impressive non the less, and inside was pretty much what I had imagined as well. The only scene which had be taking a deep breath however was the factory floor on Magrathea. It was EXACTLY as I had pictured it and it looked magnificent. Big thumbs up from me on that one!




Conclusion
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You know, I am still a bit lost on how to conclude and rate this motion picture. On the one hand, it didn't stay faithful enough to the past versions of the Guide, for me it was far too Hollywood, the storyline itself was far too much about the love story between Arthur and the not adventurous enough Trillian. They made a massive error on the last line of the film in my opinion as it totally missed the point of the restaurant at the end of the Universe, one that I do not think Adams would have let happen. However, every single time the guide has been re-invented, things have changed. So it can actually be argued that it has done exactly what Adams would have done to it.

So, in rating it, I am going to give it………4 stars. But only just. Parts of it were 5 stars, parts were 1 stars. But my love for the whole concept itself has convinced me that as my favourite author had a lot to do with it, and his comic genius is sheer brilliance, it deserves to be higher than a 3.

Thanks for reading folks, and please, don't forget your towel…..


drew

(p.s - the exact input from Adams himself is not quite clear at this point. Some sources state he had a lot, some not so much. The info I have put here about that came from the official blog - http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/hitchblog/blog.ht m - however I think that hopefully, when the DVD comes out more light will be shed on this within the extra's)

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