Hitchhiker's Guide: A Modern Commentary

            I’m trying to get creative again, so here’s a half-assed installment.  So far, life is bumming around.  I mean, too lazy to get into hipster mode level of bumming.  Looking for inspiration, waiting for the real summer to start.  It’s mostly a waiting game for everything.  The main points of update are a movie review and a new strip.  The strip is over at .  As for the review, it’s of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  After you read it, head over to The H2G2.  It’s the actual Guide.  As in all encompassing reference source that beats out the Encyclopedia Galactica.  I’m a registered researcher, have been for a bit.  Yay nerd bragging rights.

 

There have been a lot of complaints about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie.  They complain about the rushing through key plot points and classic jokes, parts of the book that were skipped and the general lack of cohesion of the film.  I completely understand why these reviews see the movie like this.  But the reviewers who say this don’t actually understand the context of the movie.

            The film itself is good.  The jokes are funny.  Mos Def as Ford is great.  He has that halted yet sure sense of self that make the alien who he is.  Freeman as Dent is perfect, much more a fish out of water than Hugh Grant could pull off.  Sam Rockwell is the weakest link in the main cast.  He’s ok, but not great.  Rockwell’s style of throwing himself into each scene too hard was a bit much.  There’s none of that self assurance he’s supposed to have, just a hollow pompousness.  He’s not the loud guy at the party whom everyone wants to be around.  He’s the loud guy at the party whom everyone rolls their eyes and humors.  And Zooey Deschenel works, though by no means steal the show.

            Actually, the real show stoppers are Marvin (Alan Rickman) and Slartibartfast (Bill Nighy).  Marvin gets the quiet, subtle laughs in each scene he’s in; his depression amidst the frenetic colors and pacing work perfectly.  And Nighy has a similar understated style that lets him stutter and mumble his way into good graces.  He simply doesn’t miss on a single line.  Oh, and the whale.  The whale handled very nicely as well.

            The actual pacing is jarring and freakish.  As it’s supposed to be.  The series in its book form never really congeals into a smooth flow until the third volume.  Which is how it’s supposed to be.  The third book is where the series starts to turn sour.  The charm of the story is in its irreverence.  The fault of the movie is that it doesn’t embrace this enough and sets up to create a supposedly smooth (sort of) movement from scene to scene. 

            There’s also the specter of the missing towel entry.  Nowhere in the entire movie is an explanation of why towels are so important.  Throughout they are utilized and sought after, but never are we told why.  This is the only lack of carry over that I will sight, though.  What was there worked well. The dolphins, mice and Vogon bureaucracy all carry the movie through.

            There’s a view out there that the movie version of this multimedia story is bad because it lacks a lot of what was in the book.  In fact, there’s one review (http://www.planetmagrathea.com/notinthefilm.html) that lists item by item what is in the book and not in the movie.  Let me draw your attention to the fourth item.  The detail of nitpicking is astounding.  They want the same narration as found in the book.  Of course, this is completely flawed.  A word for word rendition of the book would be about 7 to 8 hours long, slow and awful.  The point of an adaptation is that it’s “adapted” for a new medium.  That means changed to suit the medium.  And this story is no stranger to adaptations.  It started not as this “holy” book but as a radio series.  In fact, the script for the radio series is, in my opinion, superior to the book.  The book is, by any standard, superior to the BBC mini-series and all of them are meant to stand on their own.  The radio show had jokes not found in the book.  The book was written not as a pure novelization of the radio show, but as a stand alone novel. 

And the movie succeeds in this respect.  A person seeing it for the first time, never having read the book, will get this as a movie.  They won’t miss what’s not in it from other media.  And it will entertain. 

The “purist” vision that people keep demanding in adaptations is a growing problem, one that shows how few people understand what an adaptation is.  Harry Potter 3 suffered the same fate.  The film is vastly different from the novel.  And thank god for that.  If it was the exact same thing then it would have dragged and suffered from pacing issues that make movies enjoyable.  But people still complained.  In actuality, Harry Potter 3 was a much better movie than the second Potter movie.  But it was different than the book.  It was a great adaptation but a terrible visual version of the book. 

The same can be said about The Hitchhiker’s Guide.  AS a movie it is funny, witty in parts and very charmingly told.  What it isn’t is the book.  There are parts that are in the book that you will miss when you see the movie.  But if you want a good movie, you will be pleased.  If you want to see the book, go read the book again.  And if you want the radio show, this isn’t it either.  And luckily it’s not the BBC TV version.  It’s better.