forty two

saw hitchhikers with miles aaron and gwyn. it’s good. 90% satisfying.

it’s like the princess bride in that it’s a fantastically well made movie, with a great cast, a great script, great effects and design, and just generally rock-solid production.

but it happens to be based on a book, and the book happens to be considerably cleverer than the movie. the book happens to assume that the audience is fairly intelligent, while the moviemakers clearly felt that the book happened to assume that the audience was considerably more intelligent than they actually were.

what it works out to is that most of the bits taken wholesale from the book are, in fact, mucked up a bit. the timing is off on many jokes, and some bits are condensed, missing lines, or otherwise screwed up somehow.

all the NEW stuff, on the other hand, is fantastically well done and absolutely compelling. this falls mostly in the category of practically every scene zaphod is in, anytime ford uses his towel, everything with the vogons, and the idea that trillian is totally cool and smart and not just some bimbo.

marvin isn’t quite as solid as i’d hoped. somewhere along the line in the design process they forgot that making the prototype costume shinier doesn’t make it look any less like warwick davis in a suit with a couple of lights in the eyes.

what would have been absolutely sublime would have been if marvin, having been clearly based off the asimo and his ilk(actual robots being built by japanese companies), had actually BEEN a robot, based off the asimo design.

ah well.

to put it most simply, however, it is a fantastically fun and good movie that suffers from the same problems as any other adaption, yet manages to transcend those limitations at the same time. but the book is better, and smarter, and you should probably see the movie first if you’ve never had the pleasure.

if you didn’t like the book, you didn’t read this far.

it’s a far better movie adaptation than hellboy was, and it’s likely to be far more satisfying than the fourth harry potter movie, featuring the third director to try his hand at doing the books justice, while jk rowling is actually around to give him shit for changing things. i loved movie three because of cauron’s visual style and his willingness to adapt the story, instead of simply reenacting key sequences.

hitchhikers works along the same lines. purists will probably cringe at some of the changes, but there’s more than enough flashy visuals to satisfy any good scifi geek, and more than enough zaphod to satisfy people who are generally alive and enjoy comedy.