Hitchhiker's Guide onscreen

[Chris Knipp]

Horseradish Tree:

Looking ahead at 2005

So, what are you guys looking forward to for next year? Personally, I'm stoked for the wave of evidently superior comic book movies to be released: Elektra, Constantine, Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, and Nolan's Batman Begins. Others include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (God, they'd better not mess this one up) and Michael Moore's Sicko.

(The following is going to disappoint Hitchhiker's Guide experts, because I'm not one, but I hope it'll start a conversation going.)

Garth Jennings: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

A friendly nod, and a warning

Review by Chris Knipp

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the long-delayed evocation of a late-Seventies English radio program created by Douglas Adams that earlier led to a TV series, books and many other spin-offs. As reincarnated here, it's warm and enjoyable stuff -- relaxed, speculative, anti-bureaucratic, anti-establishment, and anti-religion. But above all two questions remain: does this really mean anything if you don’t' know the Hitchhiker's Guide already? And, if you do, will you ultimately find it satisfying? And I can't give you the answer.

The people in it are good. Zooey Duchanel is quietly appealing, Mos Def full of humor and smart energy. Alan Rickman is priceless if a bit one-note as a depressed and grumpy robot. Sam Rockwell charms and astonishes as a popinjay President of the Galaxy -- a shallow Texas charmer with Bushian intonations who's got two flip-flop alternating heads because "you can't be president with a whole brain," and says "I'm president of the galaxy; I don't get a lot of time for reading." Bill Nihy is perfect as the man at the end of the world who's one of the re-designers of planet earth. John Malkovich manages to seem different, yet unmistakably himself. He has the most extraordinary moment, when he jumps up onto a table.

Everything comes apart in the movie Guide, then gets put together again. There's an implication that a working universe isn't so much a matter of divine intervention as of good old fashioned English cooperation. Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman of "The Office") the Brit everyman whose misadventure begins the story, is saved by his alien pal Ford Prefect (Def) just at the last minute as planet earth's about to be demolished. That's when Prefect provides him with a towel and shows him how to hitch intergalactic rides. We occasionally get peeks at the guide book, which allows the filmmakers to indulge their gift for digital graphic design.

As Dent and Prefect wander about through space, a complicated, meandering plot unfolds including, among other things, a search for the secret of all things,a porcine race of bureaucrats called the Vogons (nasty creatures who like to recite bad poetry), and two little inquiring girls who turn into mice.

The excellent cast helps keep technical tricks from taking over, but the Hitchhiker's Guide movie is richer in special effects and sci-fi adventures than Russell's I Heart Huckabees. It's more exciting and better-looking too; unfortunately it's also got some of those numbing noises that pepper children's animations nowadays and can occasionally make non-cineplex denizens like me start to nod off.

If like myself you don't know the books or the TV or radio series, you can't say if long-time devotees will see this movie as a travesty or a delight. At least one I've consulted not only says it's a travesty; she goes on a nearly two-thousand-word rant about it. Mind you, this movie is clever, independent, and good natured, not an altogether common mix. It's not, however, a movie I'll want to go back to. It has moments of fun or surprise, mostly thanks to the good cast. But it hasn't got the sustained and acid wit you find in any segment of Monty Python. And it's a pretty sure bet Disney has watered down the author's original combination of passionate science, non-conformism, and intellectual inquiry. They've also added a simplistic narrative arc the original author of these meandering intellectual explorations wouldn't have countenanced, which drives the aforementioned devotee nearly hysterical. (She admits the cast is terrific, and finds that particularly frustrating.) This much is quite evident to an outsider: there's nothing like the justice done to the Douglas Adams books by Garth & Co. here that Peter Jackson did for the Rings Trilogy.

Posted on Chris Knipp website.

[tabuno]

Chris Knipp: "The people in it are good. Zooey Duchanel is quietly appealing, Mos Def full of humor and smart energy. Alan Rickman is priceless if a bit one-note as a depressed and grumpy robot. Sam Rockwell charms and astonishes as a popinjay President of the Galaxy -- a shallow Texas charmer with Bushian intonations who's got two flip-flop alternating heads because "you can't be president with a whole brain," and says "I'm president of the galaxy; I don't get a lot of time for reading." Bill Nihy is perfect as the man at the end of the world who's one of the re-designers of planet earth. John Malkovich manages to seem different, yet unmistakably himself. He has the most extraordinary moment, when he jumps up onto a table.

Everything comes apart in the movie Guide, then gets put together again. There's an implication that a working universe isn't so much a matter of divine intervention as of good old fashioned English cooperation. Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman of "The Office") the Brit everyman whose misadventure begins the story, is saved by his alien pal Ford Prefect (Def) just at the last minute as planet earth's about to be demolished."

Tab Uno: The performances in this movie, as a fan of the audiocassette version performed by Stephen Fry, were disappointing, except for Alan Rickman's voice as Marvin the Robot and Warwick Davis's body movements as Marvin the Robot. It's difficult to say whether it was the adapted script and the inability of the performers to capture the magic of the audiocassette version or whether the performers themselves were unable on their own create the magic of how my imagination visualized and experienced Stephen Fry's amazing voices and narration of Douglas Adam's books. Sam Rockwell as president was particularly irritating and obnoxious - partly perhaps as a result of the single-headed pop-up into two-heads approach to his character instead of the more traditional two-headed version from the television series and how one might imagine it from the book. In part, I suspect, the script and the inability of the performers to somehow rise above the edited-down dialogue are at fault. Much of the original, consistent, flowing British humor is lost due to severe cutting and time limitation requirements. What the performers are left with are "only half-conceived" gems of comedical brilliance. I experienced this movie (having the previous memory of the much extended audio version) as sort of a mish-mash of selected dialogue that seemed to be cut into somewhat arbitrary tidbits of what I remember from the books and audiocassette with the actors having to go from line to disjointed line to disjointed without really understanding the full context or nature of their roles and performances. It seemed that the movie version only allowed the characters to become half-characters with much of their performances and reality left on the cutting room floor or left out of the shortened script. The performers were unable to come out fully and live on the big screen.

Chris Knipp: "The excellent cast helps keep technical tricks from taking over, but the Hitchhiker's Guide movie is richer in special effects and sci-fi adventures than Russell's I Heart Huckabees. It's more exciting and better-looking too; unfortunately it's also got some of those numbing noises that pepper children's animations nowadays and can occasionally make non-cineplex denizens like me start to nod off."

Tab Uno: I had the opposite experience than Chris Knipp here. The cast and script weren't up to par with the audiocassette version for me. While the British television version had its faults due to low-budget, I found recently on seeing again a 1/2-hour episode, that I enjoyed the full-extended version much better than the movie version. What the movie version brought out was a more serious attempt to make the setting real unlike the tacky Dr. Who-like special effects that seem to make the imaginary, fantastic reality of Hitchhiker's more of a farce than a real comedy delight. I was amazed and enjoyed the special effects of the movie version and thought it brought out much better the whole setting for the movie without having to be distracted by how terrible looking the television version appeared. I agree with Chris in how "more exciting and better-looking" this version is. But I found, unlike, Chris, that it was the pop-up animations scenes (apparently performed by the Stephen Fry who also narrated the entire audiocassette verson by himself) that peaked my interest and brought me back to the more relaxed, informal vision and experience of the audiocassette. The animated segments that I enjoyed in the movie leads me to suspect that this movie may have been much better if it had been completely animated instead of part live-action and part animation.

[Chris Knipp]

If my sketchy review has any value it's as a lure to draw in experts like you.

As I said, I knew and still know nothing about all those earlier, and for devotees canonical, versions of the Hitchhiker's Guide, the original radio show, the books (which you seem not to mention) and the television series.So of course I didn't know and am interested to learn that Stephen Fry, the film's narrator, did all the voices in the radio version (I assume that's what you mean by the "audiocassette version" and that anyone could get hold of it and listen now).

In his New Yorker review this week Anthony Lane states the difference between your response to the film and mine with his usual clarity and wit:

There will be two completely separate and, I might add, mutually hostile audiences for the resulting film [of The Hitchhiker's Guide]. One will be composed of “Hitchhiker” fans, millions strong, who will interpret every minute discrepancy between what they are watching onscreen and what they once read on the page as a heresy punishable by law or, where possible, stoning. These people are lunatics, and I am one of them. Opposing us will be hordes of decent, ungeeky humans who will be bewildered and patchily amused . . .

"Bewildered and patchily amused" is about right. Where you're different from Lane is in referring as your canon to the original radio version rather than the books.

I take it that Hitchhiker's fans are a lot less pleased by the film version than Sin City fans are with that.

[tabuno]

Boy did I bite.

As for the books, I've read most of them, except the last book. Strangely enough, I am not a fan of the books. When I read them, they seemed stale, flat, without real interesting power or vitality even though the dialogue is much the same as in the audiocassette version. For some reason, it's the audiocassette version that really brings out the most vivid, entertaining experience over the books, the movie, and even the television version that I have apparently have grown to have more of an appreciation. It would fascinating to find out what people who saw the movie first, would feel about the audiocassette after listening to it second.

When Harry Potter's first film came out, I was quite disappointed how the British humor was left out, that was found alot in the narrative in the book. But as time dimmed my memory of the books, I've come to enjoy these movies in their own right.

It's possible this latest movie version is just too condensed, attempting to cover too much ground that it requires too much jumping over pages of material that allows the reader of the book or the listening of the cassette time to absorb and enjoy the unfolding of the characters, plots, and humor whereas the movie version forces us to rush along without a moments pause, making us have to take a rollercoaster ride instead of a ferris wheel ride.

[Chris Knipp]

Well, though I suppose the largest audience is through the books, the radio form is the original one, so your liking it the best makes perfect sense.

It's possible this latest movie version is just too condensed

Maybe what makes the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings film trilogy acceptable to some of the most ardent fans is that it doesn't feel too condensed..

Again I'll quote from Anthony Lane.

I had heard that the movie was a wizened mockery of the original, so it was a pleasant shock to find just how many of the brightest jokes remain; one of the best, in which an entire intergalactic battle fleet is swallowed by a small dog, “due to a terrible miscalculation of scale,” is declaimed during the final credits, as if nobody could bear to leave it out. The problem is not that the film debases the book but that movies themselves are too capacious a home for such comedy, with its tea-steeped English musings and its love of bitty, tangential gags. The demand for the literal, too, seems overwrought; a leading character with two heads became, in Adams’s hands, a sustained joke about split personality, whereas here he’s merely a job for special effects. . .

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cin...509crci_cinema (this link may not work for long).

For the more extreme rabid fan rejection mode, see the Flick Filosopher, who I cited before: http://www.flickfilosopher.com/flick...ersguide.shtml

[tabuno]

Anthony Lane as quoted by Chris Knipp.

"The problem is not that the film debases the book but that movies themselves are too capacious a home for such comedy, with its tea-steeped English musings and its love of bitty, tangential gags. The demand for the literal, too, seems overwrought..."

Tab Uno: It appears that the problem of movies is not that they are too capacious (able to contain or hold much; roomy; spacious) for such comedy, but that it is the very opposite, they are too small a medium to contain the full, context, and subtly of the orginal source material. By limiting the movie to its current length, the cute, British human begins to take on a form of one-liners from a comedy sketch instead of the fluid, timely flow over the density of the original dialogue from the book.

Additionally, the real beauty or charm of the Hitchhiker's Guide lay in the literal language and translation of the actual words into expressive dialogue (as in the audiocassette version). With Harry Potter where the British humor is a delightful supplement to the books and their omission in the film can be carried because of the solid storyline and the magical setting where its placed. With Hitchhiker on the otherhand, it is the humor that carries the books and audiocassette and without a strong, consistent flow in their setting, the movie becomes choppy and uneven. The complexity of the setting, the multitude of different encounters make for the need for some way for the audience to find some safe shores without becoming seasick. The storyline is actually voluminous when one considers that one is trying to find the answer to everything or is it the queston.

[Chris Knipp]

I see what you mean but maybe you Lane aren't so much in disagreement as just saying the same thing two different ways? The radio or book versions let your imagination soar; the movie with its special effects fills in and limits you; and the 'capacious' aspect of film as opposed to the more limited (but nonetheless rich) medium of words alone takes away attention from the language, which was everything really. And this is always more or less true when a book gets made into a film. Anyway, the fact remains, doesn't it, that you're dissatisfied with the movie version? And even more so than I was though I was only intermittently entertained, like Lane says, being unacquainted with the material and somewhat baffled by it.

The best thing that can often happen in these cases is that people will be inspired to read the books or, in rarer cases, find the cassettes, for the first time and maybe fall in love with them.

Hasn't anybody else on FilmWurld seen this new movie?

[Fan of Kubrick]

I saw Hitchhiker's yesterday, and was a bit dissapointed with the script, not the performances. I've read only the books and I loved them. I find them hilarious and intelligent, not flat at all. That's just me. But when I went to go see Hitchhiker's, I was dissapointed to see that they not only condensed the first book, but combined it with details from nearly all of the other books as well. The combination dissapointed me, especially as the dolphin scenes in the beginning weren't really necesarry, but they were from my favorite book of the series. Despite all of this, I enjoyed one thing about the movie a lot, and that was Marvin (my favorite character in the book, though for a reason not shown in the film [besides depression]). Alan Rickman's voice is great as Marvin. Colin Freeman was great at playing the average joe who becomes something that he is not entirely sure is true. He acts very innocent...

Wasn't the radio version just the first book in the series? Or was it a combination of all of them like this movie? I haven't heard it....

Just a few thoughts and questions.

[Chris Knipp]

I can't answer your questions but I agree Alan Rickman's voice was right for that part. I think the radio series might go beyond the first book but I don't know.