No need to panic...
Apr. 29th, 2005 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
williamjmI went to see the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie at the cinema today. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, I really liked the (first four) books, and the trailer was amusing, but some of the reviews were a bit worrying and suggested that maybe a lot had been changed from the earlier incarnations of the story.
Having seen it, I would say that both the positive and negative reviews I've read are partially right. On many occasions in the film the film-makers seem to have willfully truncated or removed some of the funniest scenes, which is generally bad. However, they have also added many new funny scenes, some of which are highly amusing, this is good. Oddly, I found many of the new scenes funnier than many of the original scenes that actually survived into the film. On reflection, perhaps changing large parts of the film is actually a good and necessary thing. I've read the book multiples times, seen the TV series twice and played the computer game so I'm very used to Adams' jokes. Comedy relies to some extent on being surprising and not what was expected, so if they had just repeated all the jokes from (say) the TV series, I may well not have found the movie as amusing as I did.
It isn't perfect, and not as good as it could be - the start in particular is too rushed - but I was still very entertained. The special effects are at times genuinely impressive (particularly the Margarethan's planet factory), the plot is still fairly random but arguably more coherent than that of the book, and the acting and characters are pretty good. I particularly liked Marvin, a great piece of robot design. Even when he isn't doing anything, he is still strangely amusing.
I'm now quite hopeful that it will do well at the box-office so that "The Restaraunt At The End Of The Universe" gets made. Maybe if it does really well, it might start a new fashion for British sci-fi comedy and they might finally make the Red Dwarf movie, but I'll believe that when I see it.
Having seen it, I would say that both the positive and negative reviews I've read are partially right. On many occasions in the film the film-makers seem to have willfully truncated or removed some of the funniest scenes, which is generally bad. However, they have also added many new funny scenes, some of which are highly amusing, this is good. Oddly, I found many of the new scenes funnier than many of the original scenes that actually survived into the film. On reflection, perhaps changing large parts of the film is actually a good and necessary thing. I've read the book multiples times, seen the TV series twice and played the computer game so I'm very used to Adams' jokes. Comedy relies to some extent on being surprising and not what was expected, so if they had just repeated all the jokes from (say) the TV series, I may well not have found the movie as amusing as I did.
It isn't perfect, and not as good as it could be - the start in particular is too rushed - but I was still very entertained. The special effects are at times genuinely impressive (particularly the Margarethan's planet factory), the plot is still fairly random but arguably more coherent than that of the book, and the acting and characters are pretty good. I particularly liked Marvin, a great piece of robot design. Even when he isn't doing anything, he is still strangely amusing.
I'm now quite hopeful that it will do well at the box-office so that "The Restaraunt At The End Of The Universe" gets made. Maybe if it does really well, it might start a new fashion for British sci-fi comedy and they might finally make the Red Dwarf movie, but I'll believe that when I see it.
