We went to see the new movie of “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” last night - and I came away with mixed thoughts about it.
The hilight of the movie (for me) was the entire section where Slatibartfast shows Arthur around the planet factory, but other than that I thought most of it was way below standard. It was almost like they spent 90% of the budget on 20% of the movie - and the effects of that were plain to see. The sets for the “Heart of Gold” spaceship were utter crap.
It didn’t help that Hollywood did it’s usual job of hacking a perfectly good book written by an Englishman about very English sensibilities, and re-populated it with americans who made no sense and were not funny. Moz Def was the most unconvincing Ford Prefect possible. They even changed the story to put a bloody love interest in it. The whole POINT of the original Hitchhikers story is that Arthur is typically English - and although he often yearns to tell Trillian/Trisha that he loves her, he never gathers the courage to do so.
Aaarrggh! Why does the American film industry keep doing this!? Why do they have to re-write things to fit their shitty formula, where the Americans win every time, the guy gets the girl, and lots of things blow up…
Of course it didn’t help that we saw the trailer for “Revenge of the Sith” before Hitchhikers - which was kind of like saying “this is how it should be done”. We already have tickets for SW.