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jducoeurI'm going to go into some detail below, because I want to get it off my chest, but I think ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tpau summarized it best: eh.
I didn't go into the film expecting much. Indeed, the first review I saw, at Planet Magrathea, is an extended spoileriffic rant that completely savages the film. But since then I saw and heard a lot of reviews that were all over the map -- none that really loved the film, but a fair number that liked it mixed in with the pans. Unfortunately, I found that it mostly lived down to the negative reviews.
First, the bad. The script was the greatest disappointment. It wasn't uniformly bad -- it really couldn't be, given how good the source material was. But it was surprisingly weak.
I've heard many comments of "but Douglas Adams wrote the script, so this must be what he wanted!". It's unconvincing. I simply don't believe that he had final script approval, because so many of the jokes are broken. The fan of the story will recognize many of the setups, but the punchlines are missing. From the cellar joke to the Vogon poetry, it's as if the writer just didn't get the jokes, so they cut the punchlines for time. That's the real tragedy of the movie. As the Magrathean review points out, witty dialogue was always Adams' strength, so getting that wrong really does the story a disservice. There were perhaps a half-dozen lines in the movie that took me by surprise, leaving me sure that they were new dialogue from Adams. The rest just didn't sound like him.
(And frankly, even if Adams *did* write this script, it doesn't change the basic fact: this is by far the weakest of the versions of the story. Bad is bad.)
The casting and acting was uneven. In some cases (which I'll talk about later), I thought it worked reasonably well. But several choices were just odd. In particular, Ford and Zaphod were changed from the expected, and not for the better. Instead of his usual right-angles-to-reality oddness, Ford just comes across as goofy. And Zaphod gets a makeover as a sort of rock star with (asmsmemory put it) Bob Eggleston Hair. That's not a wholly crazy idea, but in practice his ego gets played so far over the top that he comes across as irritating rather than strangely cool. And while John Malkovich is always brilliant, he is given nothing to work with here -- his entire segment could have been excised from the movie for the better.
The direction is just plain terrible. Throughout, I had a feeling that at least some of these actors could have done a good job if they'd been directed properly. But again, the movie commits a mortal sin: it has no comic timing whatsoever. Even when they leave the jokes intact, the delivery falls flat. This is good material -- the radio show was deadly funny, IMO. But there were scarcely any chuckles in the audience when we saw the movie.
Finally, the cinematography was again uneven. Some bits really clicked -- in particular, the Slartibartfast sequences are great. But a number of sequences were apparently shot with hand-held cams to give them that modern edgy look, and it simply distracted. Indeed, between that sense of odd unease and the peculiar surrealism of much of the movie, they seemed to be less influenced by previous HHGttG versions, and more by Time Bandits. Which is a fine movie, but the juxtaposition of styles was strange.
Okay -- all that said, the movie didn't totally suck. What worked?
Some of the actors clicked nicely. While I don't think that he was good as Simon Jones in the original, Martin Freeman acquitted himself reasonably well, getting across the sincere but slightly clueless Arthur Dent properly. Zooey Deschanel's Trillian was one of the few good tweaks to the story. Trillian has tended to be pretty ancillary in previous versions, but here she's front and center, resembling (asmsmemory pointed out) Marion Ravenwood in a number of respects. If she'd been given better dialogue, I think she would have been great. Alan Rickman is utterly perfect as the voice of Marvin, and Stephen Fry was born to be the voice of the Book.
Speaking of which: the Book is the one element of the movie that consistently shines. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's also the element that changed the least from previous versions. The graphic style goes well with the text, they (mostly) get the jokes right, and the droll humor manages to come through.
The special effects are mostly excellent, as you would expect of a modern big-budget film. They are pretty, but with a very subtle edge of cheapness that works very well with the material. As previously mentioned, Slartibartfast gets the best scene in the movie, segueing from a segment that is downright BBCesque in its dowdiness to one that is so strangely magnificent that it deserves to be considered the definitive version of the New Earth scene. It was the one part of the movie that I thought was a proper homage and enhancement of the material, rather than simply screwing with it for the worse.
Finally, there were elements that others have complained about that I didn't mind so much. The rework of Marvin's look didn't bug me (and I was amused to see the original Marvin lurking in the background of one scene). The emphasis on transformation in the Heart of Gold effect was stronger than in the original, but wasn't entirely an invention, and largely worked for me. Finally, I didn't mind the largely-invented romance plot, which becomes a major element of the movie -- I didn't think it quite worked, but again I think it would have done so in the hands of a more competent director.
Summary: Really, the tragedy here is lost opportunity. After 20+ years of people talking about making this movie, it's really sad to see a version that is just weak like this. It's not horrifically awful -- it's just nowhere near as good as it could have been if the people making the film had understood it better. Viewed both as a work on its own, and as a version of Hitchhiker's, I wind up giving this film a C-: Thoroughly Mediocre. There are good bits, and I didn't come out wanting my two hours back, but there's just no reason to bother. Go get a copy of the TV series instead -- the effects aren't as good, but the script is ten times better...
tpau summarized it best: eh.I didn't go into the film expecting much. Indeed, the first review I saw, at Planet Magrathea, is an extended spoileriffic rant that completely savages the film. But since then I saw and heard a lot of reviews that were all over the map -- none that really loved the film, but a fair number that liked it mixed in with the pans. Unfortunately, I found that it mostly lived down to the negative reviews.
First, the bad. The script was the greatest disappointment. It wasn't uniformly bad -- it really couldn't be, given how good the source material was. But it was surprisingly weak.
I've heard many comments of "but Douglas Adams wrote the script, so this must be what he wanted!". It's unconvincing. I simply don't believe that he had final script approval, because so many of the jokes are broken. The fan of the story will recognize many of the setups, but the punchlines are missing. From the cellar joke to the Vogon poetry, it's as if the writer just didn't get the jokes, so they cut the punchlines for time. That's the real tragedy of the movie. As the Magrathean review points out, witty dialogue was always Adams' strength, so getting that wrong really does the story a disservice. There were perhaps a half-dozen lines in the movie that took me by surprise, leaving me sure that they were new dialogue from Adams. The rest just didn't sound like him.
(And frankly, even if Adams *did* write this script, it doesn't change the basic fact: this is by far the weakest of the versions of the story. Bad is bad.)
The casting and acting was uneven. In some cases (which I'll talk about later), I thought it worked reasonably well. But several choices were just odd. In particular, Ford and Zaphod were changed from the expected, and not for the better. Instead of his usual right-angles-to-reality oddness, Ford just comes across as goofy. And Zaphod gets a makeover as a sort of rock star with (as
msmemory put it) Bob Eggleston Hair. That's not a wholly crazy idea, but in practice his ego gets played so far over the top that he comes across as irritating rather than strangely cool. And while John Malkovich is always brilliant, he is given nothing to work with here -- his entire segment could have been excised from the movie for the better.The direction is just plain terrible. Throughout, I had a feeling that at least some of these actors could have done a good job if they'd been directed properly. But again, the movie commits a mortal sin: it has no comic timing whatsoever. Even when they leave the jokes intact, the delivery falls flat. This is good material -- the radio show was deadly funny, IMO. But there were scarcely any chuckles in the audience when we saw the movie.
Finally, the cinematography was again uneven. Some bits really clicked -- in particular, the Slartibartfast sequences are great. But a number of sequences were apparently shot with hand-held cams to give them that modern edgy look, and it simply distracted. Indeed, between that sense of odd unease and the peculiar surrealism of much of the movie, they seemed to be less influenced by previous HHGttG versions, and more by Time Bandits. Which is a fine movie, but the juxtaposition of styles was strange.
Okay -- all that said, the movie didn't totally suck. What worked?
Some of the actors clicked nicely. While I don't think that he was good as Simon Jones in the original, Martin Freeman acquitted himself reasonably well, getting across the sincere but slightly clueless Arthur Dent properly. Zooey Deschanel's Trillian was one of the few good tweaks to the story. Trillian has tended to be pretty ancillary in previous versions, but here she's front and center, resembling (as
msmemory pointed out) Marion Ravenwood in a number of respects. If she'd been given better dialogue, I think she would have been great. Alan Rickman is utterly perfect as the voice of Marvin, and Stephen Fry was born to be the voice of the Book.Speaking of which: the Book is the one element of the movie that consistently shines. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's also the element that changed the least from previous versions. The graphic style goes well with the text, they (mostly) get the jokes right, and the droll humor manages to come through.
The special effects are mostly excellent, as you would expect of a modern big-budget film. They are pretty, but with a very subtle edge of cheapness that works very well with the material. As previously mentioned, Slartibartfast gets the best scene in the movie, segueing from a segment that is downright BBCesque in its dowdiness to one that is so strangely magnificent that it deserves to be considered the definitive version of the New Earth scene. It was the one part of the movie that I thought was a proper homage and enhancement of the material, rather than simply screwing with it for the worse.
Finally, there were elements that others have complained about that I didn't mind so much. The rework of Marvin's look didn't bug me (and I was amused to see the original Marvin lurking in the background of one scene). The emphasis on transformation in the Heart of Gold effect was stronger than in the original, but wasn't entirely an invention, and largely worked for me. Finally, I didn't mind the largely-invented romance plot, which becomes a major element of the movie -- I didn't think it quite worked, but again I think it would have done so in the hands of a more competent director.
Summary: Really, the tragedy here is lost opportunity. After 20+ years of people talking about making this movie, it's really sad to see a version that is just weak like this. It's not horrifically awful -- it's just nowhere near as good as it could have been if the people making the film had understood it better. Viewed both as a work on its own, and as a version of Hitchhiker's, I wind up giving this film a C-: Thoroughly Mediocre. There are good bits, and I didn't come out wanting my two hours back, but there's just no reason to bother. Go get a copy of the TV series instead -- the effects aren't as good, but the script is ten times better...
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 12:20 am (UTC)I think he's ego is supposed to be over the top. This is a man with so much ego he believes that he can walk into the Total Perspective Vortex and come out feeling good about himself. Yes, he's also supposed to be so hip he cannot see over his own pelvis, but they only have two hours, and he's one of 5 main characters.
The major problem I had with him was the head thing. Just didn't work for me, visually.
The script may be weak, compared to the book. But I can think of only oen movie who's script is as strong as the book it came from. Movies just don't have the time to be as strong as a well-written book. It is a limitation of the genre.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 04:17 am (UTC)But even entirely considered on its own as a movie, I just didn't think this was particularly good. It didn't seem to know what it was, or what it was trying to do. It had enough of the original story to make it painfully obvious how much was missing. And the stuff that was excised seemed to be replaced by material that didn't fit well and didn't go anywhere. I would much rather have seen a story that was genuinely its own thing, and clicked on that level -- a movie that was an homage rather than a remake might have succeeded. But this was a compromise in all the worst ways...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 03:11 am (UTC)Yes, Malkovich's part could have been excised; that's because, as far as I can tell, it was completely new material, invented solely to provide the gun plot.
One other thing they got right: They kept the original theme music, albeit modified to be more of a movie score.
tv series vs movie
Date: 2005-05-15 05:03 am (UTC)I admit it's been over a decade since I read the books but I'm not sure I caught any of the punchlineless setups. Can you think of any examples?
Re: tv series vs movie
Date: 2005-05-15 03:10 pm (UTC)"But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh, yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But, look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, 'Beware of the Leopard'."
In the movie, that exchange is reduced to two or three lines, ending with "In the cellar!" The result just isn't *funny* -- it lacks the outrageous buildup of the original. It *could* have been funny easily enough -- even if they didn't have the time for the full exchange, they could have tacked the punchline onto the end, and it still would have mostly worked. Instead, it sort of gets dropped flat, sans punchline. (This sort of thing is the principal complaint of the Magrathean review, and I'm afraid I agree.)
There are other examples, but I think it illustrates my main gripe of the movie. It preserves the *plot* of the books fairly well, for the most part. But in the earlier versions, the plot is the handmaiden of the dialogue, *not* the other way around. The plot is a loose stitchery that the dialogue get hung upon, spiderweb insubstantial and mostly not all that relevant. And this case is a fine example of why I think the movie got it wrong: in preserving exchanges like this for purposes of plot, but dropping the joke, it misses the reason why the exchange existed in the first place.
IMO, the movie would have been far stronger if it had instead dropped a number of these exchanges *entirely*, and beefed up the remaining ones. Hence the feeling of wasted opportunity: I think the movie wasted a lot of time that would have been far better-served in strengthening other bits. A good movie adaptation starts from an understanding of what made the original source interesting in the first place; it discards the fluff and focuses on that those lynchpin points. I think this movie failed to grasp that Hitchhiker's is about wit, and specifically dialogue, first and foremost...
Re: tv series vs movie
Date: 2005-05-15 03:45 pm (UTC)And I thought the movie did preserve the the most important point of why the joke existed which was to counterpoint the Vogons saying the same thing... the whole anti-bureaucracy-because-bureacracy-leads-straight-to-insanity theme that I thought they did a good job of showing.
But, different people no doubt came away with different impressions :)
Re: tv series vs movie
Date: 2005-05-15 04:00 pm (UTC)Oh, absolutely. Indeed, one of the things I find especially interesting about this movie is how incredibly *mixed* the reviews are. I can't recall the last time I saw such an even spread of opinions about a film. Granted, I haven't yet come across someone who thought it was totally fantabulous, but I think I've seen every other point on the spectrum, from people who liked it quite a bit to those who totally despised it. And there doesn't seem to be a really strong grouping, even within fandom. That's unusual -- generally, I at least see some major clumps of opinion, but in this case I'm not sure I've seen even two reviews that quite completely agree with each other...
Re: tv series vs movie
Date: 2005-05-16 03:01 am (UTC)Re: tv series vs movie
Date: 2005-05-16 04:30 am (UTC)"They were on display"
"Yes, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard."
Which might be very slightly longer than the film version, but is basically a two-line exchange that wouldn't have disappointed fans with its flatness.
As I commented in my journal, by comparison with the radio show, which is more comparable as it tends to be more concise, the film covered about three episodes, or 90 minutes of spoken material. I don't hold that they should have stuck with all the original dialogue, but they really ought to have been able to include just about everything from it and quite a bit more, if they'd really been doing a good job.
Which brings me to your broader point, on what good adaptations do. My complaints with bad adaptations, and my enjoyment of good ones, is basically always driven by how well the adaptors understood what was behind the superficial material, and tried to work the same effect, rather than sticking to specific moments of the plot while ignoring the meaning behind them. I thought LOTR, for instance, did a good job in most respects, but fell down utterly in presenting the actual major themes of the book, and thus felt ultimately hollow. Here, the main point is the quirky Britishness of the universe, which we don't really see at all.
Also, incidentally, I'd have to disagree that this film captured the plot elements particularly well. I mean, the Earth blows up, Ford works for the Guide, and everyone winds up at their checkpoints in vaguely the right places, but the reasons they're there are entirely wrong. We aren't supposed to be watching an epic quest to find the ultimate question, it's pretty much the last thing on our heroes' minds at any moment of decision. The Vogons are sort of the villains, but to the extent that there's any overarching plot it's the psychiatrists who are pulling the strings, not Zaphod's bizarrely inserted love interest.
Er, anyway, I could rant about this for quite a long time, but you get the idea.
And I didn't think the movie was entirely bad either. The stuff on Vogsphere was pretty funny.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 07:34 am (UTC)I disagree with almost all your points. I liked the characters and the writing. I liked Zaphod alot! I liked Ford, thought he was great.
I liked the directiona dnt he script and the casting, and thought there was more then enough jokes in there that you can realistically fit into a movie...
It was a fun movie. IF you went to have fun, you had fun.
I hear people diss the Harry Potters.
I hear them diss the LOTR trilogy
Hellboy... this one... many others...
My greatest thought for the scifi fan genre (especially book geeks and I am one so I speak from knowledge) has now become we have become so nitpicky and geeky we simply destroy all our fun. I get tired fo something pretty dang good compared to most of the schlock out there (like dumb and dumber and American pie, and stupid blondes go into law movies) getting powed, and we wonder why the executives dont want to fund stuff us anymore.
My personal opinion.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 03:22 pm (UTC)Even more relevantly, I loved both the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, despite my being probably the biggest comic-book fan you know, and those movies both diverged more from their source material than any of the above examples. Your accusation of me being a nitpicker just doesn't hold water; on the contrary, Hellboy is distinctive as being the only faithful adaptation from a comic-book I've ever seen that I liked.
And frankly, the comments about the execs writing stuff off because of this doesn't hold water, either -- the adaptations that have been well-made have mostly been *huge* commercial successes, as well as being popular among all of fandom except for a relatively small (albeit loud) bunch of dumb nitpickers. You're taking the stereotype fat comic book fan from the Simpsons, and attributing it to all of fandom. That's rubbish, and honestly kind of rude: it's tarring the whole group with the flaws of the most socially-incompetent ten percent.
I go to a movie to see a good movie. And ultimately, Hitchhiker's failed at that. It failed to make sense; it failed to be funny; it simply came across as rather disjointed. Indeed, I saw a lot *more* positive reviews among fandom than I did among the mundane press, much of which found the movie to be a pointless waste of time. Fandom didn't love the movie, but mostly they didn't hate it either; hence the summary of "eh". Many of the mundane reviewers *did* hate the film. Which tends to indicate that the problem here doesn't have anything to do with fandom, but with the movie itself...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 06:58 pm (UTC)Well, I guess I actually KNOW too many fat dumb comic book people (many who arent fat and dumb except when dealing with the adaptations) so I am taking that from ACTUAL people and not just pulling it from my ass as they say. So I am not going to say its rude. To ME its a fact of MY life I guess. I guess I am just stuck with all the really bitchy ten percent on my lists.
I got the similiar kind of reveiws on many lists I am on, with the same kind of split (like or hate), with reveiws that made me wonder if they are showing different movies becasue it was certainly not what *I* saw.
I know some execs and some actual writerrs DO do this., also from personal experience. They get on the sci fi crowd even if there is main stream success and make the comments along the line of "they dont appreciate us" (Now I know a lot of what we get can be tripe..Look at the downfalll of the sci fi channel and the crapola we have been getting from there...)
(ON a side note cause for some reason I cant move this or copy or paste in this browser..), JMS (from B5 fame) HIMSELF did it with a story of his. HE wrote a story that published in the B5 magazine to supposedly end the suffering of the Susan Marcus fans by getting them back together... It was the worst piece of tripe I have read, with his characters written OUT of character and with bad storylines, and when the majority of that fadnom rose up and screamed, he was shocked people didnt appreciate it. And made the smae TV exec comments that HE used to complain about them making to him...
Bonnie Hammer from SCI fi (who is gone now, but there are similar replacements) HAVE made those kind of statements. So again it is NOT bunk. They do have spies on certain lists and message boards. Its a simple fact as well. Am I saying its right>? No... but IT IS there as well, and its one of the reasons they even start leaning MORE towards the mainstream. Again this is from comments FROM CONS FROM people int eh industry. Again I am not just pulling this out of my ass.
Either way, I guess we saw differenet movies, because I still dont agree with you critque even
though you are welcome to have it as yours...
Hell, I am one of the few who absolutely hates ET, Close Encouters and 2001, to the dismay of other sci fi fans, so we all have our fallings.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-16 12:30 am (UTC)I wouldn't say that I hate them, but none are among my favorites. I've only watched ET once (when it first came out), and even as a kid I found it cloying. Close Encounters was entertaining, but the only thing I really took away from it was a fondness for the Meco version of the five-note riff at the center of the movie. And while I do like 2001 quite a bit, the ending looks ever more pretentious as the years pass. (And I do have to put on my 1960s-film filter to appreciate it: the style is distinctive of the era.)
But yes -- tastes vary a lot. I'll admit that part of my annoyance at the HHGttG movie is that I can't *completely* view it in isolation. I didn't expect it to match the plots of the previous versions (which didn't match each other anyway), and I expected a lot of abridgement. But I have a very clear opinion of *why* this story is worthwhile, namely the witty writing -- that's as much the core of this story as, say, alienation is the core of X-Men. That's precisely where I think the movie is weakest, so it's hard for me to forgive: to me, they missed the point...
don't worry, you're not alone :)
Date: 2005-05-15 03:56 pm (UTC)Marvin
Date: 2005-05-15 10:07 pm (UTC)I've read the books, but they didn't grab me much, and am not likely to see the movie (haven't seen/listened to any of the previous adaptsion), but the flaming neoteny caught my attention.
Re: Marvin
Date: 2005-05-16 12:35 am (UTC)Well, yeah! But remember, we're talking about a pathologically depressed robot -- totally brilliant, but never applied to *anything* useful. Looking that dippy just gives him even more to be depressed about. I actually thought it suited him quite well: there's just something *perverse* about Marvin looking cuddly.
(Besides, he's made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, the same people who brought us Eddie the Irritatingly Cheery Shipboard Computer and the doors that sigh happily when they open. An impractically cuddly-looking robot is entirely consistent...)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-16 04:31 am (UTC)Oddly enough, I also thought it was kind of Time Bandity. Particularly the last scene felt like the final scene of TB. Weird.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-16 12:44 pm (UTC)