On Saturday night, my lovely wife and I went to go see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Before I get too much into the film treatment, I want to give some background about my experience with Douglas Adams’s work.
When Tasha and I first met, she was never without her Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts. This was Douglas Adams’s first attempt at this world and it was written in 1978, when radio programs still existed. I read parts of it, and quickly fell in love with Adams’s downright weird sense of humor and odd excursions into strange worlds that he invented.
It didn’t take much convincing to get me to read the novelization of Hitchhiker’s Guide and the following four books in the Trilogy. This was one of the first things that Tasha and I really bonded over, which means it holds some importance to me.
Only recently have I been able to see some of the BBC TV series that was made in the early 80’s. It was campy, but still captured the feel of the Universe.
So lets just say I have some strong emotional ties to the Hitchhiker’s universe.
The film is narrated by various entries from the Hitchhikers Guide, which appeared to me like a garish Mac OS enhanced by some Flash animation. I thought the Guide was spot-on to what I expected it to be.
The cast was also very good too. Martin Freeman (Arthur Dent) also played in Love Actually, as did Bill Nighy (Slartibartfast) which I was happy to see. I don’t think I could’ve hand picked a better Arthur. Trillian (played by Zooey Deschanel) was a little odd for me, she just seemed a little more vacant than I expected Trillian to be.
I thought Sam Rockwell’s portrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox was great! He reminded me of a (more) manic George W. Bush. The idea of his second head being wrapped up in his winning of the election was hilarious, and I loved the fact that the second head was a little more angry than his normal head.
Marvin was played physically by Warwick Davis (Wicket the Ewok, Willow, etc) but was voiced by Alan Rickman. When I first heard about the voice and saw the design I was a little concerned, but it came off GREAT! Actually, it was one of my favorite aspects of the film.
The plot was just a brief seperation away from the actual plot of the book, and I thought it all hung together perfectly. I about crapped my pants when the original Marvin from the 1983 television series showed up in the queue on Vogsphere.
I could definitely see how this film could’ve been horribly confusing to those that hadn’t read the book, but if you haven’t read the book you probably wouldn’t go to see the film anyway so its your loss all the way around.
Its a real shame that Douglas Adams didn’t live to see this film, as it was one of his recent life goals to get this thing made. When he died in 2001, I was afraid that it would never happen or if it did it would be so corrupted that it would be worthless. I’m glad to say it was quite the opposite: an excellent treatment that he would’ve been proud of.
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