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20050502 Monday May 02, 2005

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Like a few others, I went and saw the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this weekend. I took my parents (who were in town for a brief visit) and none of us had read the book or knew anything about it (except it's a cult classic). I've read a lot of criticisms about the movie today on blogs, but most seem to be related to the book vs. movie thing. IMO, the movie is rarely - if ever - going to be as good as the book.

We all enjoyed the movie and I laughed my ass off throughout. I thought the characters were great and the special effects were incredible. I'd see it again w/o reservations. However, I'm easy to please when it comes to movies - so you might want to take my opinion with a grain of salt. Posted in General at May 02 2005, 05:58:22 PM MDT 6 Comments

Comments:

Wow. You laughed? At what?? As near as I could figure, they only put five minutes of jokes into a two hour film. I though H2G2 was a terrible movie.

Posted by Kris on May 03, 2005 at 02:43 AM MDT #

Good to hear you enjoyed it. It's what some of these morons who only judge the film by the book often forget: the movie is mainly intended for people who haven't read the book, because, and this is part that most of these book-fundamentalists don't seem to understand, most people haven't.
Maarten

Posted by Maarten on May 03, 2005 at 05:58 AM MDT #

I guess its one of those movies you like or don't... (duh?) I thoroughly enjoyed it. The book it wasn't, but I felt it stands on its own. Read Kris's review, and I wonder if he knew that Douglas Adams himself was very involved in it, and penning most of the screenplay before he died.

Posted by Bryce on May 03, 2005 at 07:30 AM MDT #

Bryce - yeah, I knew that Adams was involved in writing the script up until he died. I just wonder how much it was changed after he'd gone. I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing a heck of a lot. Whoever approved the final draft of the script clearly hadn't understood major chunks of what was going on. There are screaming, gaping, awful holes in the plot of that film. Plot writing wasn't Adams' strength but he was at least clear and consistent. If he were still alive, I don't think it would have appeared in that form.

Anyone who liked the film and hasn't read the book is going to assume I'm being snobbish. I can't disprove that, but I went along ready to be entertained and found myself very, very bored.

Posted by Kris on May 03, 2005 at 10:21 AM MDT #

Kris, from what I read, the screenplay was 95% written by Adams. The remaining bit was written after his death. A vast majority of the concepts and plot was devised by Adams himself. I can't provide a link, as I'm going off my memory, I just remember reading that. I don't find you snobbish. Liking or disliking a movie is based on your tastes. If you didn't like it, you didn't like it... And you aren't alone. I'm estimating about half didn't like it, and half did. I went into it with very low expectations. Every review I had read up to that point had been bad. I was pleasently surprised. I enjoyed the movie on its own, independent of the book. You are right about plot.. Adams was a genious with whitty conversations, and plot was just a way of moving from one conversation to the next. (ironically, before I posted this, the simple math question was: 9 + 33 .......

Posted by Bryce on May 04, 2005 at 09:16 AM MDT #

THE MOVIE ROX

Posted by 210.11.188.17 on September 05, 2007 at 05:37 PM MDT #

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Matt Raible is a Web Architecture Consultant specializing in open source frameworks.
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