The New Road

Hitchhiker's Guide

I saw Hitchhiker's Guide today with the rest of the Macromedia crew. It was faithful to the book, and by extension the radio show, and I think that's where it fell down for me. I always found the book to favor the fast joke payoff. In fact, there is no joke that I found that extended beyond a page or two. There was very little in the way of comic payoff that extended across the entire script.

I also never once thought the characters were in any real danger. The Vogon poetry thing just fell flat. I actually remember feeling more fear for the characters when I read that scene in the book then when I saw it in the movie. They tried to set the Vogons up as evil with one of them crushing a crab. But most of us eat crab (myself excluded) so there was nothing to fear there.

The actors didn't sell me on it either. Mos Def seemed disengaged. Alan Rickman and John Malchovich were completely underutilized. Zooey Deschanel, who played Trillian, just phoned it in with the exception of one scene where she had some great lines. Bill Nighy did perhaps the best job as Slartibartfarst. He has been good in everything I've seen him in.

I think the script was the real problem with this movie. Just as movies don't translate well to radio. Radio serials don't translate well directly to film. The payoffs were too short. There were too few character arcs. It was just poorly written.

Anyway, I was in the minority. Everyone seemed to like it but me. They were happily surprised as the film exceeded there frighteningly low expectations.