I didn’t have high hopes going in. I had seen the trailers.. I had caught a few of the reviews on Friday… But I wanted to like the movie! I went in thinking, “It might not be great, but its still Hitchhiker’s Guide”. I don’t do that with many movies.
Unfortunately it wasn’t worth the price of admission. Frankly, save the money and go out and buy the books if you haven’t read them. If you have read them, go out and buy the unabridged books on CD. They are read by Douglas Adams himself, and the books are even funnier with a British accent.
I have only read the main books; not any of Adams’ work published posthumously, nor listened to the BBC radio rendition (which I believe was written by Adams). Adam’s is given screenplay credit in the movie, and I know he had a screenplay written before he died, but I wonder how far the movie deviated from it (quite a bit I’d imagine).
The movie is just not funny. You giggle a bit when the movie references something you know in the book, but its just not funny! I wanted to laugh. When something was about to happen that I knew I’d laughed at hard in the book, I wanted to laugh, but there was no punch. It was actually a real let down.
The plot doesn’t follow the actual plot of the first book. In fact, only lip service is paid. I don’t know if Adams had planned it this way, or they were taking content from the BBC radio rendition, but it didn’t work for me. It wasn’t faithful to the universe Adam’s created. The big thing you get from the books is that life throws you curve balls, and you deal with it and go on… there’s a little humor in every situation. Its just not there. The books don’t have happy endings. They have real endings and conclusions. They tried to give the movie a fucking hollywood ending, and it frankly sucks.
The highlight of the afternoon was the Episode III trailer (one I hadn’t seen). Here is another one that I have got my hopes up for. But in this case, I know it has to end badly. People will die. People with cry. The limited bits that have crept out over the internet have been indicating this, so I’m actually very happy. The dialog will still probably be very cheese… but at least it will be dealing with a more Hamlet-like subject.
Episode III and War of the Worlds are the two big movies next up on my list.