The Hitchhiker's Film

[poliphilo]

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is in a very English vein of absurdist comedy and it was a mistake to cast Americans in leading roles. The nearest American comedy gets to Adams is the Marx Brothers- and that's how the Americans play it and it's wrong. You've got to underplay Adams, you've got to deadpan it.  If you jump around semaphoring that this is all like whacky and zany you kill the comedy stone dead. Freeman, Nighy and Rickman know how it's done; Mos Def and that desperately unfunny guy who played Beeblebrox haven't a clue. 

The original radio show was an interminable ramble. Long before the end I was all whimsied out.  So cutting it down to the length of a bubblegum movie was a good idea, right? Well, yes and no. On the one hand the movie doesn't outstay its welcome and on the other there's now too much plot and it's pretty hard to follow. Why was the gal with the severe haircut chasing Beeblebrox in alliance with the Vogons and who was she anyway? I don't know- and worse than that- I don't really care. 

Adams's genius (that's maybe too strong a word for a hit and miss humourist) was for wordplay. Vogon poetry, silly names, surreal flights of fancy. The original was never stronger than when Peter Jones read discursive extracts from the Guide.  Almost the funniest thing in the entire movie is the narrated story- tacked on at the end- about the alien battlefleet that gets eaten by a small dog. The animatronic Vogons are fun and the CGI landscapes are pretty to look at but they don't add anything essential. The joke about the whale falling through space is no funnier now you can see it.

Adams's master was Lewis Carroll and you can't film him either-  not with any success-  though I hear Tim Burton is going to have a stab at it. Personally I wish he'd save himself the bother.

Comments

Hitchhikers Guide...

[msjann65.livejournal.com]

My then teenage son (he's 32 now) introduced me to Doug Adams's books, which we enjoyed together. Later he got his hands on a video of BBC's treatment of the series, and we enjoyed that one together, in spite of its poor effects, and as I remember, it too was subject to the "zany" treatment rather than deadpan. For all that we liked it.
When the movie came out my son was not in the immediate neighborhood, so I went alone to the theatre and thoroughly enjoyed it, even though they failed to explain the significance of the towel. And ANY Adams fan knows how important it is to always "know where one's towel is...."
One of the Christmas gifts my son gave me (around 1995 or so) was a leather bound copy of four of the Hitchhiker books, which I treasure - and enjoy.
I was sad and disappointed when Doug Adams died, because I was hoping to see more of his writing.

Re: Hitchhikers Guide...

[msjann65.livejournal.com]

By the way, it is my opinion that if someone views either the TV shows video OR the movie without having read the book(s) first, they will be lost with no idea of the point of it all. Just a thought...

Re: Hitchhikers Guide...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the film would be hard going for anyone who didn't already have some familiarity with the franchise.

I'm not sure whether I've read the books or not. But I have heard the radio series- all 12 hours of it- and it was the radio show that came first.

What is the point of the towel? I must have known once but I've forgotten. :)

Re: Hitchhikers Guide...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

P.S. I've misled you. The history of THGTTG is incredibly complex. The very first appearance of the characters was on radio- but thereafter they jumped about between radio, TV and the printed page in a quite bewildering manner- and the later radio series were based on novels rather than the other way round.

Adams revised the story every time he moved into another medium- with the result that there really is no definitive, canonical version