Adam Fields (weblog)

This blog is largely deprecated, but is being preserved here for historical interest. Check out my index page at adamfields.com for more up to date info. My main trade is technology strategy, process/project management, and performance optimization consulting, with a focus on enterprise and open source CMS and related technologies. More information. I write periodic long pieces here, shorter stuff goes on twitter or app.net.

5/1/2005

Hitchhiker’s Guide movie was a waste of everyone’s time

Filed under: — adam @ 11:20 pm

It wasn’t bad, per se. It was certainly better than most of the crap Hollywood churns out. But – why? Why did they even make this movie?

I understand that certain things need to be modified, sped up, adapted, cut out, spliced, twisted, and generally modified in order to make a good book into a good movie. But they took an absolutely fantastic book, did all these things, and ended up with a wholly unremarkable movie.

Some specific complaints:

1) The comedic timing was off. It really felt like everyone, with the possible exception of Sam Rockwell, was just reading off of a script, rather than saying their lines as their characters.

2) There weren’t very many new jokes! In fact, there weren’t very many jokes at all. There was some physical comedy, but very much of what was funny in this movie was funny ONLY because it was funny in the book. As previously noted by others, a fair number of the jokes lack any context whatsoever.

3) Douglas Adams imagined a galaxy full of wonder and absurdity. The movie is a galaxy full of tedious adherence to rules.

I could go on, but that’s about all the energy I have for that.

Again, it wasn’t actively bad, it just wasn’t good. Oh well.

Ten out of ten for picking good source material, but minus several million for misinterpreting the Restaurant at the End of the Universe joke.


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