Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike The Hitchhiker’s Guide
I just returned from seeing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2), and while I wouldn’t describe it as terrible (it’s still loads more watchable than, say, Highlander 2), I would describe it as profoundly disappointing.
Now, understand that I first read the H2G2 series when I was in seventh grade. I’ve read the first four books in the “trilogy” time and again. (I have - but have not read - the fifth and sixth books.) I’ve enjoyed the TV movie. And I’ve passed many a long hour on car trips listening to the original radio programs on tape. There’s a certain feel, a particular rhythm and energy common to the various incarnations of the H2G2 series.
That selfsame style of rhythm and energy are so sorely missing from this cinematic adaptation.
One of the things I’ve grown to love in the series are its very quotable bits, the little H2G2 mantras, the enjoyment of which I likely share with other aficionados of the series:
- “Ford, you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.”
- “I wonder if it will be friends with me?”
- The entire “disused lavatory”/”Beware of leopard” bit
Most of them are gone, excised completely or gutted so intensely as to make them all but neutered.
- Upon arriving on the starship Heart of Gold, Ford and Arthur find themselves briefly in the form of couches. Couches!
- The H2G2 script tags an entirely unnecessary “Hello, ground!” onto the end of the falling sperm whale’s soliloquy.
- Arthur had to “go down to the cellar.”
(beat)
No, really, that’s all there was to it.
There were other tweaks, too, that stripped away some of the cleverness of the originals. Remember Ford (or Arthur, depending on which version you first encountered) convincing Prosser to take Arthur’s place in front of the bulldozer at the beginning? That’s gone, replaced with Ford passing around brewskis to the construction crew. How about Arthur trying to wrangle up a decent cuppa tea? Gone, replaced with a vendomaticked cup o’ something green and smoking.
And that brings me to another issue I have with the movie: The changes to Arthur Dent.
As in the H2G2s that have come before, Arthur is our “everyman” character, our gateway into the vast reaches beyond this unfashionable Western Spiral Arm of the Milky Way. But always before, Arthur has been capable of action - whether ranting and raving and threatening to stomp into tiny little bits the workmen demolishing his home, or actively engaging Eddie in making a decent cuppa. But the movie has him bouncing around from situation to situation, incapable of taking any actions (even the wrong ones Arthur was so apt to take).
It’s like they removed all the periods and exclamation points in Arthur’s emotional makeup and replaced ‘em with a perpetual question mark.
Any additional time the filmmakers could’ve spent in staying truer to the source material was wasted on pointless additions. The entire Humma Kavula and Vogsphere sequences? Added nothing, IMHO, to the story, particularly not at the cost of the “good bits.”
And that’s not easy for me to say; I wholeheartedly believe that a movie version of something has the right and the responsibility to chart its own course - movies are not books are not comics are not radio shows. This movie definitely goes its own way. Pity that it’s so distinctly the wrong way.
Moreover, it’s dispiriting to realize just how much the filmmakers truly seem to love the source material. Don’t believe me? Just look at how many really great homages and in-jokes did show up: Simon Jones, the original Dentarthurdent, as the voice and image of the lethal Magrathean answering machine; the TV version’s Marvin, as one of the queue-dwellers on Vogsphere; the I-still-love-it-to-this-day H2G2 theme song, played over the first appearance of the Guide proper in the movie. There’s even a flash of Douglas Adams’ face as the movie fades to a “For Douglas” dedication at the end.
All nice touches, but in the end the movie simply doesn’t live up to the tradition set by the H2G2s that have come before. And I, for one, am saddened by that.
Now hand me my Joo Jantas and that Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster; I think I’m gonna need ‘em.