So I saw the Hitchhiker's Guide movie...

[vakkotaur]

And, well, it's a movie. It's not a great movie. It's not a terrible movie, either. It does feel a like it's misfiring - existing in the incredible state of Almost. I'm not sure what's wrong, but I know it's not what it really ought to be. It probably doesn't help that I've seen the TV series which consists of 7 roughly half-hour episodes and so had a bit more time to work with - but jmaynard has not seen the TV series[1] and has a similar assessment of the movie.

There are several places where a line is changed or a word dropped that means a joke is now not as effective. I won't point them out, there are enough places on-line that can likely do that. there is one bit that works while watching the movie (suspension of disbelief and all), but doesn't make sense when thinking about it late. Since it might just be a spoiler for someone, though I doubt it, I'll put it behind a cut. It's also not a very big deal.

In the sequence on Vogsphere where every time someone has a thought or idea they get hit in the face, Ford uses his towel to block the impact. But he doesn't seem to get hit in the face for thinking to do that. He gets hit (or almost hit) when he announces that he has an idea. This suggests that you can have thoughts and ideas as long as you don't tell anyone about them. But that doesn't work. If silence was protection, the run across the sands would have been just a run across the sands, not a run across the sands while getting hit in the face every couple steps.

Is it nitpicking? Probably.

---

[1] Something I hope to rectify sometime soon, since there is a DVD of the series out.

Comments

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't plan to see the movie at all. How could they possibly do it justice? The BBC television series comes close to the original and is worth seeing.

The real thing, though, is the radio series. That's where it started, even before it was published in print. As a radio serial, the story is superbly well done and the sound effects are hilarious.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I don't blame you. Jay and my sister and I saw it more for the 'completist' idea of having seen this version than expecting it to be good. The TV series did handle it rather well, I agree. I have heard the radio series, but not recently. I think I have tapes of it, but it's been a while since I listened to most tapes. Probably time to see about the DC offset on the tape deck or the sound card and start digitizing the tape collection.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Somewhere down my 'to do' list is 'Figure out how to convert taped audio into MP3." I know it can be done, probably even with what I've got on hand here, just haven't given it a high priority.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I had to acquire a tape deck so I had something with decent outputs that could play tapes, but either the deck (Technics M234X) or my sound card has a problem that introduces a DC offset on one channel. I haven't yet gone looking far enough to see which is which and if I need to replace a sound card or work on the tape deck - I suspect it's the deck. Perhaps now that my Great CD Encoding Project has been completed I should see about that.

When things were working, I was able to get taped audio into the computer and work on it. I still can, but I haven't found a way to remove the DC offset in the sound editor - and I know that's not the right way to fix the problem. The right way is to replace the offending leaky capacitor. Other than that, I've found that Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) suits my purposes for a nice sound recorder and editor. That's cross-platform only helps. I first used it on Windows and Jay has used it on the Mac, and now I use it on Linux.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the lead. If I were to try that with this machine, I'd want a Linux application and I wasn't sure what might be available or usable.

It's a movie...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Overall, I agree, though my reactions were more complex.

I always worry about the movies that I keep compulsively analyzing *while* I watch them the first time. If I just dive in and forget myself, it's a good movie as far as I'm concerned. If I don't, I figure there must be something wrong with it, on some level.

I plan to write an LJ review of the new Hitchhiker's film myself, so I won't say much here, except that I thought most of the visuals and all of the casting were brilliant. (However, I also thought the third trailer on the movie website, which I never saw in the theaters, was in some ways much better than the movie.)

Re: It's a movie...

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

The preview done in Guide style? Yes, that was brilliant - and I think I laughed more at that than at the movie itself.

Re: It's a movie...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

So did I--that was my main point. :-)