It's not often that I feel the need to boo a film, but in a brief hiatus during the closing credits of "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" I took that opportunity. They had got it wrong and not made it anywhere near funny enough. The new ideas sat uneasily in it and the stuff from the book suddenly looked dated. The plot was a mess, it was hard to follow and would have been even harder for someone not familiar with the original source material and all the Americans were wrong in it. It should be a buddy movie about Ford and Arthur, with Zaphod stealing the scenes he's in and Sandra Dickinson looking pretty and aloof and not liking Arthur in that way, but it is now a love story which is cloying and wrong. It's much funnier that the last two earthlings should not be able to get it on, largely because the bloke is a bit of a twat and the woman can do better. I knew it was going wrong when Arthur started talking about Trisha in the pub before the earth was destroyed and had her photo on his mobile phone. It's better as it was, that this information is talked about when they meet her in the story. To flag it up in advance just makes everything stupidly coincidental (even given they have an improbability drive) and sets us off in the wrong direction. The fact that they don't just let you spot the original Marvin in the queueing scene and have to have Martin Freeman pull a stupid kind of double take face as he passes him is another example of where they get it wrong. But it's mainly that Mos Def makes no impact as Ford and the story isn't enough about the main two characters.
I wasn't all that disappointed as it was pretty much what I'd been expecting, but it's still a wasted opportunity. Or maybe it was just that the idea should have been left where it was. Because when it came out it was original and surprising and something like the earth being blown up in the first half hour must have been an amazing coup de radio. But now it seems just a bit gratuitously surreal and studenty.
It was telling that the trailers and adverts got bigger laughs from the cinema full of nerds. It just wasn't funny enough. And thus not a fitting tribute to Douglas Adams. I wish he hadn't died, but I also wish he'd left Hitchhiker where it was and done some other stuff instead. Check out "Last Chance To See" if you haven't already, but also "Salmon of Doubt", which was one of the things tha inspired me to get writing this blog.
Don't go and see the film though. You will be disappointed. Just read the books again, especially the first couple. It's inspired rambling craziness, as if written by a child who has to dig themselves out of the gaping holes they have created. You can probably buy the book of all the books for cheaper than the cinema ticket anyway.
As it is everyone involved in the film might as well have just not bothered and instead all travelled to wherever Adams is buried and one by one piss on to his grave.
OK, it's not that bad. But nearly.
